The editor

Most of what you do in Galley happens on this screen, and this page covers all of it. The main thing to know is that the page you type on already looks like the printed book.

Writing on a real page

Most writing apps give you one long white page. Galley shows you a book page at the trim size you picked (a 6×9 paperback, for example), in a book typeface, with the right margins. The first paragraph of a chapter isn't indented and the ones after it are, like in a printed novel. You don't need a separate layout step later, because this is the layout. Change the typeface, the text size, or the trim from the toolbar, or set them for good over in Book design.

The toolbar, control by control

The controls are in two places. Formatting is on a bar above the page, and everything about the state of your work (word count, saving and so on) is on a status bar at the bottom of the window.

Find & replace and the command palette are in the book's navigation bar at the top, because they're for finding things, not changing the page.

Typeface

A dropdown of the typefaces for your book's language, split into Recommended and More faces. This sets the face you write in; the face the book prints in is the same setting, saved per book in Book design.

Text size

14 16 18 , the on-screen size only, for your comfort. It does not affect the printed font size.

Trim size

The page dimensions, from mass-market up to Royal. Changing it here saves to the book immediately, so the page reflows to the real size. Hidden on smaller screens.

Zoom

− 100% + , zoom the page in or out. Click the percentage to go back to 100%. It only changes what you see.

Save status

A dot plus a word: a pulsing dot and Saving…, a green dot and Saved, or a grey dot and Unsaved. You'll almost always see Saved. More on this below.

Word count

Live words for the current chapter, on the status bar beside the chapter's name.

About N pages

Roughly how many printed pages this chapter runs to at your trim size, updating as you type. The PDF sets the real count.

Page theme

Flip the page between cream and dark. ⌘⇧L. Doesn't change how the book prints.

Find & replace

Opens find and replace for the whole book. ⌘F. Lives in the navigation bar beside ⌘K. See Revision tools.

Comments

Opens the comments panel on the right: margin notes to yourself, which you can resolve.

Stats

Opens the stats panel: word counts, reading time, and pacing for the chapter and the book.

Version history

Opens the history panel: earlier snapshots of this chapter, ready to compare and restore.

Typewriter scroll

Keeps the line you're typing in the middle of the screen instead of at the bottom.

Focus mode

Hides everything but the page. ⌘⇧F. Press Esc to bring it all back.

Block styles: Body, Title, Scene, Header

Select a line, or just put your cursor in one, and a small style switch appears so you can say what that line is:

BodyTitleSceneHeader

Body

Normal prose. It's almost everything you write, and it's the default, so you'll rarely need to change it.

Title

The chapter's title line (an H1). Every chapter has one already; you rarely add another. How it's typeset (centered, numbered, all-caps, and so on) is decided once for the book by your chapter opening style, not here.

Scene

A scene heading (an H2), for the occasional titled or dated section inside a chapter. Most novels don't need it. If you just want a blank pause between scenes, use a scene break instead.

Header

A plain sub-heading (an H3), aligned left instead of centered. Non-fiction and memoir use it a lot. It's also useful on a long back-matter page, like author's notes.

Formatting

When you select text, a small bar appears above it. The formatting options are at the top of it, above the options for tagging a character or adding a glossary term. The same controls are in the toolbar too.

Bold

⌘B. Not used much in fiction, but it's there.

Italics

⌘I. For emphasis, titles, or a remembered voice.

Underline

⌘U. Rarely used in books, but it's there.

Strikethrough

⌘⇧S, or type ~~like this~~. For text you want the reader to see crossed out. If you're cutting a passage you might want back later, use Cuttings in the selection menu instead. It takes the text off the page and saves it so you can get it back.

Highlight

A working mark for yourself. It does not print.

Superscript and subscript

For H₂O and the occasional 1^st. Footnote numbers are handled by references and don't need this.

Block quote

An indented passage, for an epigraph or a quoted letter.

Italics disappear from that bar when your book is set in a typeface that has no italic, which is true of every non-Latin face on the shelf. See writing in another language.

There's no text colour or font picker. Anything like that is set in Book design, so it applies to the whole book.

Line breaks inside a paragraph

Press ⇧Return to end a line without starting a new paragraph. The next line starts at the margin with no indent and no gap above it. That's what you want for verse, an address, a telegram, song lyrics, or the sign-off on a letter. Plain Return starts a new paragraph and gives you the indent.

Lists and tables

The three buttons after the mark group insert a bulleted list, a numbered list and a table. You can also start a list by typing - or 1. at the beginning of a line.

A numbered list counts in your book's own digits. An Urdu book counts ۱ ۲ ۳, a Hindi book १ २ ३, and an Arabic book ١ ٢ ٣. You don't set this; it follows the book's language.

Tables are there for the books that need one: a memoir with a chronology, a non-fiction chapter with a small comparison. A table keeps its shape in the ebook, in Word and on the printed page, and a table in a right-to-left book runs its columns right to left. A table won't split across two printed pages, so keep them short enough to fit one.

Seeing the invisible characters

Under the type menu there's a switch called Invisibles, and ⌘⇧8 does the same thing without leaving the page, which is the key Word has used for its paragraph marks for years. Turn it on and Galley marks every space, line break and paragraph end on the page, so you can find the double space, the stray break, the trailing whitespace. It's a view for proofreading, and it doesn't change your book or the export.

What it marks follows your language. In Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali the zero-width joiners are part of how words are spelled, so they get their own mark instead of being flagged as a mistake. In languages that don't use them, they're flagged in red. Thai, Japanese and Chinese aren't offered the space mark at all, because those languages don't put spaces between words.

Scene breaks

A scene break is the gap between two scenes in the same chapter, often shown as * * *. To make one, type three dashes (---) on their own line and press return. It turns into a centered break. What it looks like in the finished book (asterisks, a small ornament, a thin rule, or just a gap) is a single setting you choose once for the whole book in Book design. You always type ---, and Galley shows it however you've set it.

Mentions: @ for characters, # for places

Type @ and a short menu of your characters appears; keep typing to filter, press return to drop the name in. Type # for the same thing with locations. It means you won't misspell "Siobhán", and each mention also links back to that character or place. That keeps your story bible connected to the manuscript, and lets ⌘K find every scene a character is in. In the exported book, mentions are plain text. If a name isn't in the list yet, you can create the character or place right from the menu.

Focus mode

When you want 0 distractions, press ⌘⇧F, or click Focus . The sidebar and toolbar are hidden and only the page is left. Your word count stays at the edge of the screen. Press Esc to bring everything back.

A chapter beside the one you're writing

To check what Elizabeth said three chapters ago without losing your place, open that chapter's menu in the sidebar and choose Open beside . It opens on the left, in your typeface and page colour, and the chapter you're writing stays on the right. Pick another chapter from the list at the top of it, or close it with the cross.

The chapter beside is read-only, so you can't type into the wrong one.

Typewriter scroll

Toggle Typewriter and the line you're writing stays in the middle of the screen instead of moving down as you type. Over a long session it's easier on your eyes and neck. It works well with focus mode.

Light page or dark page

The app around the page stays dark, but you can make the page itself cream or dark. Flip it with Page theme or ⌘⇧L. You might want a cream page during the day and a dark one at night. It doesn't change how the book prints.

Accent themes

The app has one accent colour, and you can pick it: Papaya, Pineapple, Pineberry, Plum, Pomegranate or Watermelon. It changes the colour of buttons, links and other small parts of the app. It doesn't change your text or how the book prints.

Open the Accent section of the menu and pick one. Your choice is saved in that browser and used across the app.

Saving, autosave, and version history

You don't need to save anything yourself. Galley saves as you type, saves again when you move to another chapter, and honours ⌘S if pressing it makes you feel better. The dot in the status bar shows whether everything is saved.

Underneath, it also keeps past versions of every chapter: a snapshot each day, plus one whenever you take a manual snapshot, change a chapter's stage, or make a sweeping change like a book-wide find and replace. Open the History panel to see them.

• Compare any old version against your current text. The words you added and removed are highlighted inline, so you can see exactly what changed.
• Restore a version if you rewrote a scene and want the old one back.
• Milestone snapshots are kept for good. A chapter keeps up to fifty snapshots. After that, only the daily ones are thinned out.