Pick your preferred theme
Getting a writing project going involves setting the right vibe. To help you get those creative juices flowing, we’re adding three new themes to Ellipsus.
- Sepia: A cozy palette of beiges and browns reminiscent of parchment.
- Nature: A palette of deep greens, like strolling through a tranquil forest.
- Ultra dark: An ink-black backdrop for your work.
Themes are stored on each browser / device where you use Ellipsus, so you can set one theme for your laptop and one for your phone.
What’s the future of themes? Think more palettes and more granularity (e.g., setting Nature for your fantasy story and using Ultra dark for something horror-related).
What theme would you like to see next? Add your ideas here.
Meet your new dashboard
We’ve given the dashboard a much-needed glow-up.
On desktop, you’ll see a (collapsible) sidebar, where you can access work you’ve created, docs shared with you, your settings, and support materials. On mobile, you’ll see a bottom bar that puts key action within thumb’s reach.
Beyond looking much cleaner, this change sets the stage for future improvements like list view (!!!), favoriting, and more.
Watch this space.
Make your snippets pop
It warms our hearts to see your snippets when we’re lurking around the web. But they were missing something very important—the ability to shape visual emphasis. Italics can shift the meaning of sentence, or express a character's inner thoughts; bold text can heighten tensions in a heated argument… we want your words to come across loud and clear.
Now, text colors, bold, italics, underlines, and strikethroughs are supported in snippets, preserving all emphasis, no matter where your writing is shared.
Move faster with UX improvements
In some ways, Ellipsus will always feel different to tools like Google Docs and Scrivener. But some patterns bear repeating, especially when they help make writing, sharing, and collaborating easier. In January, we shipped a few small updates that should make Ellipsus a little more pleasant to use.
- New drafts can be created from a plus sign in the left-hand panel of the editor.
- Comment annotations have a different color than text selections.
- Document links can be copied by right-clicking on dashboard cards.
Writing in the age of erasure
We’re not going to mince words: The world is suddenly a much scarier place than it was just months ago. Project 2025 is no longer a vague nightmare—it’s more tangible each day—and fascism seems suddenly back in vogue.
In times when marginalized voices are threatened, it’s more important than ever to keep writing. Our co-founder Rex wrote a post summarizing the current state of affairs. I’ll leave you with a few words from him.
Empathy is one of the most valuable resources we have, and in the darkest times writers armed with nothing but words have exposed injustice, changed culture, and kept their communities connected.