Version History

Scriptorium quietly protects your drafts. It saves a version whenever you pause, records which section changed and by how much, and lets you travel back to any moment — a version you recognise, or a date on a calendar — and put it back.

Where to find it

Open a manuscript and click the history icon in the sidebar on the right, or press Ctrl+J / ⌘J and pick Version history.

The panel covers the manuscript you are in and everything under it, so opening it on a book shows every chapter’s activity in one list.

What gets saved, and when

• Versions are saved when you stop writing, not on a timer and not on every keystroke. A burst of editing becomes one version, not twenty.
• Only sections whose text actually changed are recorded. An untouched chapter costs nothing, however many versions there are.
• There is no daily limit and no cap you have to manage. Older versions are thinned automatically — everything from today, hourly for a week, daily for a month, weekly beyond that.
• It never slows down your writing. Saving your words and recording a version are two different jobs, and only the first one happens as you type.

Note

There is deliberately no setting for how many versions to keep. Versions share their content, so a chapter that has not changed across thirty versions is stored once — the question the setting would ask is one you would need to know the storage model to answer.

Milestones

Before a big revision, click Save a milestone at the top of the panel.

A milestone marks the moment as yours: it records every section, so it is a complete point to come back to, and it is never thinned — automatic versions from the same minute may eventually be, but yours will not.

Milestones are marked in the list, and the filter at the top of the panel narrows to just those when the list gets long.

Reading the list

Each row is one saved version: which sections changed, how many words moved, and when. Sections appear under the name they have today, so a chapter you renamed last month is still the one you recognise. The bar under each row shows how much moved, measured against the busiest version of that day — a glance down the column finds the morning the work actually happened.

Click a row to open the comparison.

Comparing

The comparison answers one question: what did this look like then, and what has happened since?

Two ways to read it, from the toggle in the toolbar:

• Unified marks up a single document with what would change. Best for deciding.
• Split puts both versions side by side, whole. Best for reading — comparing two drafts needs the unchanged prose around them as context.

Beside the restore button are the stakes: how many words would come back if you restored, and how many would be lost. Those are the two numbers that decide the answer, so they sit next to the button rather than in a key somewhere above it.

Narrowing to one section

The dropdown in the toolbar lists every section that changed at that moment. Pick one and the comparison — and the restore button under it — shrink to that section alone.

Choosing a different moment

The arrows in the toolbar step to the previous or next saved version, not by a fixed amount of time, so every press lands on something real.

To jump further, close the comparison and use the sidebar: the list for a version you would recognise, and the calendar button beside the filters for a date you remember. Days that hold versions are marked; set the time, click the day, and you land on the version saved then or the closest one before it.

Restoring

• Restore this section puts back just the section you are looking at.
• Restore this version puts back the whole manuscript, including its structure: sections you deleted come back, and reordering is undone.

Restoring is safe. Scriptorium takes a version of the current state first, so the toast that appears afterwards offers Undo — which puts you back exactly where you were. If a restore would trash words you have written since, it says how many and asks first.

Sections that exist now but not in the version you restored are moved to the trash, not destroyed. You asked to go back to Tuesday, not to annihilate Wednesday; if you want them gone, empty the trash.

What this is not

Version history protects manuscripts. For a copy of your whole workspace — every project, notes, entities, images and settings — use Backup & Restore. The two are different safety nets and it is worth having both.