Manual

Everything the app does, in the order you’ll meet it. Questions: hello@manutius.app

Getting started

• Download the DMG and drag Manutius to Applications. It’s signed and notarized, so it opens without warnings.
• The first 14 days are a full free trial. To buy or enter a key: Manutius → Settings… (⌘,) → License.
• Books are .book files (⌘S). After the first save, every change autosaves; unsaved work is kept in a recovery copy and restored on the next launch.
• File → Import Word Document splits a .docx into chapters on its headings.

Writing

• Type on the pages; text flows onto new pages automatically. The chapter title goes at the top of the chapter’s first page.
• ⌘B / ⌘I bold and italic · ⇧⌘8 scene break (or type *** and Return) · ⇧⌘9 block quote · ⇧⌘C centre a paragraph · ⇧⌘0 back to a normal paragraph.
• ⇧⌘H heading · ⌥⇧⌘H subheading · ⇧⌘U bulleted list · ⇧⌘7 numbered list. Press the same shortcut again to go back to a paragraph; Return on an empty list item ends the list.
• ⌘F Find & Replace in the chapter or the whole book (Match case, Whole words) · ⌘G / ⇧⌘G next / previous · Replace All shows Undo.
• ⇧⌘N new chapter · drag chapters in the sidebar to reorder · double-click to rename · right-click for more.
• ⌘2 whole-book view (front matter, blank pages, page numbers) · ⌘1 back to writing · ⌘+ / ⌘− / ⌘0 zoom, or pinch.
• Hide the sidebar with the icon at its top (⌃⌘S); the icon in the right panel’s header hides that panel (⌥⌘0).
• ⇧⌘F (View → Focus Mode) leaves only the page: the sidebar and panels slide away, the toolbar and status bar fade out (move the pointer to the top or bottom edge to bring them back), and every paragraph but the one you’re writing fades, with the page you’re on kept in the middle of the window. Esc brings everything back. Settings → Writing → Hide sidebars, panels and bars turns the hiding off.

Design

The Design button (⇧⌘D) opens the book’s design in five tabs.

• Type: the book’s language (English, German, French or Spanish — it sets hyphenation, chapter numbers, the Contents, Notes and copyright pages, and the language tag in EPUB and Word files), font, size, line spacing, paragraph style (first-line indent for fiction, spaced for non-fiction), justification and hyphenation. Large print sets up a large-print edition in one click.
• Page: trim size — 6×9, 5.5×8.5, 6.14×9.21, 7×10 (paperback and hardcover), 5×8, 5.25×8, 5.06×7.81 — margins, running heads and page-number position. The status bar warns when the inside margin is too small for KDP at your page count.
• Chapters: chapter and part labels, the chapter heading style (Classic, Small caps, Uppercase, Big numeral, Rules or Plain), a heading font of its own for chapter and part headings (the book fonts plus Cinzel, Playfair Display, Bodoni Moda, Josefin Sans and Montserrat; embedded in the PDF and the EPUB), a chapter image printed at the top of every chapter — above the label or in its place, at a width you set — the scene-break ornament (asterisks, asterism ⁂, fleuron ❧, diamonds ◆ ◆ ◆, a short rule or a blank line — the PDF and the EPUB both use it), title drop, right-hand starts, drop caps, small caps, and where notes print (chapter end, book end or page-bottom footnotes).
• Book: title, subtitle, author, ISBN, copyright page, dedication, epigraph (a quotation with its source), “About the author”, “Also by”. The headings printed over those two pages can be your own wording (for example a feminine form); empty keeps the standard one shown in grey.
• Cover: see below.

Book structure

• Front & back matter (sidebar): half title, title page, copyright, dedication, epigraph, contents, “Also by…” and “About the author” — one checkbox each. Edit their text in Design → Book.
• Other pages: acknowledgments, an author’s note, a content warning, a playlist, a glossary, a cast of characters. Add a page… in that list (or Design → Book → Other pages), give it a title and a text, align the text left, centered or right, and place it at the front (after the epigraph, before the contents, no page number) or at the back (after the last chapter, listed in the contents). One printed page each; a blank line starts a new paragraph and a single line break stays, so a playlist is one song per line. Each page has its own checkbox in the sidebar.
• Scenes: a chapter with scene breaks gets a small arrow in the sidebar; click it to list its scenes with their first words and page. Click a scene to jump to it. Drag scenes to reorder them, or drop one on another chapter to move it to that chapter’s end — with Undo.
• Part pages: right-click a chapter → Add Part Page Before. Double-click a part to rename it.
• Prologue, epilogue, interlude: right-click the chapter → Remove Chapter Number. It keeps its title and heading style but prints no “Chapter One” label, and the chapters after it keep counting as if it were not there, in the book, the contents, the EPUB and the Word export.
• Images: ⇧⌘I or the picture button. Images never split across pages. Click one for Small / Medium / Full width, a caption, or Remove. Manutius warns if an image is too low-resolution for print.
• Notes: ⌥⌘F inserts a numbered note at the cursor; click a number to edit it. Print them at the end of each chapter, in a Notes section at the back, or as true footnotes at the bottom of the page they are on (Design → Chapters). Footnotes look the same while you write and in the PDF; a long one continues on the next page. EPUBs have no pages, so there notes print at the end of each chapter.

Comments

• Select some text and press ⇧⌘M (Format → Comment…, or the speech-bubble button) to leave yourself a note on it. With nothing selected, the word at the cursor is used. A comment stays inside one paragraph.
• Commented text is highlighted while you write; click it to read or edit the note. Resolve removes the comment and keeps the text. ⌘Z doesn’t undo adding a comment, so use Resolve.
• ⌥⌘M (Edit → Next Comment) jumps to the next comment, on through later chapters and back to the start. The sidebar shows how many comments each chapter has.
• Comments are never printed: the PDF, the whole-book view and the EPUB show the text without them, and word counts and page breaks stay the same. Claude can read them too, so you can ask it to go through your comments.

Versions

• ⌥⌘V (File → Save Version of This Chapter…, or right-click a chapter → Save Version…) keeps a copy of the chapter as it is now. A name is optional; the date is kept either way.
• File → Chapter Versions… (or right-click → Versions…) lists them. Pick one to see what changed since, word by word: struck-through red is only in that version, green was added since.
• Restore puts a version back (it restores the text and title), and saves the chapter as it was first, so you can always go back again (the notice also has Undo). A version is saved automatically before Claude rewrites a whole chapter. Each chapter keeps its last 20; Delete removes one (with Undo).
• Versions keep your text; pictures stay as they are now.

Spelling & grammar

• Underlines: red spelling, blue grammar (wrong word, “the the”, “a an”…), dotted amber style.
• Grammar checking is English only. For a book in German, French or Spanish, spelling is checked by macOS as you type.
• Click an underlined word → pick a fix, Ignore (this book) or Add to dictionary (all books). Fixes undo with ⌘Z.
• The toolbar Aa✓ badge counts issues in the chapter; click it to jump to the next one.
• Settings → Proofing: on/off, and American, British, Canadian or Australian English. Checking runs on your Mac; nothing is sent online.
• Repeated words: Settings → Proofing → Highlight repeated words (or View → Repeated Words, ⌃⌘R). A distinctive word that returns within about 80 words gets a dotted violet underline; names and small words are skipped. Click it for counts, Ignore (this book) or Find all. Off by default.

Listen

• Listen (⇧⌘L) reads aloud from the cursor, highlights the sentence being spoken, and continues into the next chapter. The player has previous/next sentence, play/pause, voice and speed. Typing stops playback.
• Voices come from Kokoro, an open-source model that runs on your Mac. The first use downloads it once (about 95 MB); after that it works offline. A book whose language is set to German, French or Spanish (Design → Type → Language) is read by a voice for that language (Piper: Thorsten, Siwis, Davefx or Claude), downloaded the same way, 65–110 MB.
• File → Export Chapter Audio… saves the current chapter as .m4a (or .wav).

Cover

Design → Cover. Add your front art, or a full-wrap image from a designer. Manutius calculates the spine from your page count and paper, adds the spine text, and builds the back (blurb, colours, optional image and author photo) and the barcode. Under Barcode, keep the area clear (KDP prints its own there), have Manutius draw one from your ISBN with an optional five-digit price code, place your own barcode image, or have none. Guides show trim, spine and safe areas. Export → Print cover PDF is a KDP-ready full wrap with 0.125″ bleed. For a hardcover (5.5×8.5, 6×9, 6.14×9.21 and 7×10), set Binding to Hardcover (case laminate): Manutius uses KDP’s hardcover spine and board sizes with the 0.591″ wrap that folds around the boards, and the guides show the wrap and hinges; the PDF is saved as “… - hardcover cover.pdf”. Ebook cover JPG is a 1600 px store cover, and EPUBs include it automatically. Re-export the cover whenever the page count changes.

Plan

Plan (⌥⌘P) shares the right side with Design.

• Outline: a word goal with deadline and daily pace, the synopsis, and each chapter’s status (Idea → Done), a note, and a word target. Click a chapter to open its note; the status dot is a menu. Status dots also appear in the chapter list.
• Words today: the status bar shows words written today, and Outline shows the last two weeks as small bars under the goal.
• Reading time: the status bar shows how long a reader needs for the chapter and for the whole book, and the ebook preview shows it for each chapter. Settings → Writing → Reading speed sets the pace (250 words a minute by default).
• Notes: as many separate notes as you like. Cast: characters, places and things. To-do: a checklist.

Everything is saved inside the .book file.

Export

• ⌘E Print PDF: exact trim size, fonts embedded, mirrored margins — upload as the KDP / IngramSpark interior.
• ⇧⌘E EPUB: reflowable ebook for Kindle, Apple Books and Kobo.
• Preview ebook… (Export menu, or View → Ebook Preview ⌘3): page through the EPUB on a reader-shaped 6 × 8 in screen before you export. Pick a chapter or front-matter page, change the text size with A− / A+, and switch Light, Sepia or Dark; ‹ › or the arrow keys turn pages. It uses the EPUB’s own text and styles, so headings, ornaments, drop caps, notes and pictures look as they will in the file. Every reader sets its own type, so page breaks will differ.
• Word document: manuscript format for editors and beta readers — Times New Roman 12, double-spaced, 1″ margins, a title page with the word count, each chapter on a new page and an “Author / Title / page” header. Comments and notes become Word comments and footnotes, pictures keep their captions, and scene breaks are a centred #, the manuscript convention. File → Export Word Document (.docx)…, or the Export menu.
• Print cover PDF and Ebook cover JPG from the Export menu or the Cover tab.

Library

View → Library (⌘L, or the books icon in the toolbar) shows every book you have opened or saved. Shelf stands the books up with their real covers and trim sizes; Spines packs them side by side in the cover’s own colour and type; List adds words, chapters and the last edit. Pick a book to see its details on the right. Read pages through it in the ebook reader without closing the book you are writing; Edit opens it, and asks first if another book has to be closed. Double-click or Return also opens a book; Space reads it. Add Books… lists .book files Manutius hasn’t seen yet; Remove from Library only removes the entry, never the file. Books already in Documents and Desktop are found on the first visit.

Backups

Manutius saves a backup every 5 minutes while you write (only when something changed) and when you quit. It keeps the last 20, plus one per day for 30 days. Change the interval, count and folder (e.g. iCloud Drive) in Settings → Backups. File → Restore from Backup… lists them with word counts; restore in place, or open one as a copy. A save that would drop most of a book’s chapters keeps the previous file here first, and so does an unsaved draft that is let go.

Appearance

Settings → General: System, Light or Dark. Dark pages in dark mode makes the pages charcoal for night writing; it only affects the screen — exported PDFs are always black on white. Language switches the interface between English and German, or follows the language of your Mac; it changes menus, panels and dialogs only, never the book. Units shows margins, trim sizes and cover dimensions in inches or millimetres, or follows the measurement system of your Mac; books are always saved in inches, so a file opens the same on every Mac.

Shortcuts

Settings → Shortcuts lists every menu command with its shortcut (⇧ is Shift, ⌃ Control, ⌥ Option, ⌘ Command). Click a shortcut and press the new keys; Esc cancels and Delete removes it. If another command already has those keys, Manutius asks before replacing; keys that belong to macOS, such as ⌘Q, are refused. The arrow on a changed row brings its default back, and Restore Defaults resets them all. Menus and tooltips always show the current keys.

License

• Settings → License: paste the key from your purchase email and click Activate. One license works on up to 3 Macs; Deactivate this Mac frees a seat. With a monthly or yearly plan, Manage subscription… opens the manage page to switch plans, move to the lifetime license, update your card, cancel or start again; the key stays the same.
• After the trial, without a license, the app is read-only: you can open books and copy text, but not edit or export.
• Lost your key? Recover it by email.

Assist (optional)

The ✦ Assist button (⌥⌘K) opens the Assist panel. With nothing connected it offers to connect an app (see below); with Cursor, Codex or another app connected it shows that app is working on the book; with Claude Code connected it is a chat panel: “check my tone”, “grammar pass on this chapter”, “am I following my plot?”. Claude sees the open chapter and your selection, and reads your chapters, plan, cast and notes through Manutius’ own tools. Allow edits is off by default; turn it on and Claude can make changes itself, each with Undo.

This uses Claude Code — Anthropic’s command-line assistant — with your own Claude account. Install it from claude.com/code and run claude once in Terminal to sign in.

Connecting an AI app

Entirely optional. It works with your own account in the app you connect, and your text goes straight from Manutius to that app on your Mac — never through Manutius servers.

Manutius is an MCP server, so an AI app you already use can work on the open book directly. File → Connect an AI App… (or Settings → ✦ Assist) shows how for each app: Claude Code has a Connect button that registers Manutius for you; Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI and other MCP apps get the exact command or JSON to paste. Every edit shows a notice naming the app, with Undo; ⌥⌘Z steps back through them, and the tab lists them and shows which app is connected right now. Untick “Allow connected apps…” to block access.

Help

Help → Report a Problem… opens an email to us with the app version and recent log attached for you to review. Help → Third-Party Licenses lists the open-source software Manutius is built with.