Novly Download

A writing room for your novel.

Novly is a free Mac app for novels and picture books: your manuscript, your cast and places beside it, and an AI that has read the story so far.

Download for Mac · M1 or later

Free. For Apple silicon Macs (M1, M2, M3, M4 and later) on macOS 26. Not for Intel Macs.

The Atlas of Small Lights 184 words · Page 1 of 1 · Saved

The Observatory

Pages that turn themselves.

A page that looks like a book. When it fills, the next one begins on its own.

Novly on a Mac: the chapter list on the left, the page ‘The Observatory’ in the middle, and the AI Assistant with the book’s context on the right.
The Atlas of Small Lights, a sample book, open in Novly.

Stuck on page two?

Press Continue and the AI writes the next page in your voice. It knows your genre, your characters and places, the chapter so far, and the suggestions you accepted.

Apple Intelligence on your Mac, an open model running locally, Ollama, or your own Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or OpenRouter account. AI is optional, and there are no credits to buy.

Your whole world, close.

The AI Assistant panel: a field to describe the next page, a Continue the story button, and the book's context: chapter, characters Ivo Bell and Mara Venn, locations.
It reads the story so farBook, chapter, cast and summary, sent with every request.
The sidebar: Chapters, Characters and Locations tabs, with chapters The Observatory, A Map of Missing Stars and The Tide Archive.
Chapters, cast, placesThree tabs beside every page.
Mara Venn assigned but never mentioned in “The Tide Archive” AcceptDismiss

It notices forgotten threadsUnused characters, unvisited places, unrevealed secrets.

A 1660 engraved celestial chart, the northern sky drawn as figures inside a circle, with cherubs in the corners.
Places with secretsGive the Observatory a secret, and the AI knows to plant it. Chart: Cellarius, 1660, Rijksmuseum.
The two sample books every new Novly library starts with: The Atlas of Small Lights, a mystery novel, and Luna and the Star Garden, a picture book.
Novels and picture booksOne library, kept on your Mac.
Mara ×3 Ivo ×2 The Observatory ×1

Every name, countedMentions tracked per chapter.

Tonight there were six.

Highlights with notesMark a line, leave yourself a note, or ask AI to rework it.

Your story, as a sky.

Characters are stars, places are landmarks. Press play and the book lights up, chapter by chapter.

The Story Map's constellation for The Atlas of Small Lights: characters as glowing stars joined by relationship lines, places as landmarks, a continuity panel on the left and Mara Venn's card on the right with her mentions per chapter and connections. The Story Map's storylines: each character is a coloured thread moving between the Observatory, Venn and Daughter, the Tide Archive and Saltglass Point across six chapters, bundling where characters meet.

Continuity notes, worked out from your words. No AI needed.

  • Where did Ivo Bell go?Last seen three chapters ago. Bring him back, or tell the reader why.
  • Wren and Odile never share a scene.They’re allies, but no chapter has them together yet.
  • The Lamplighter arrives late.A hint earlier would make the entrance feel earned.

Words and pictures.

Lewis Carroll wrote Alice by hand and drew her himself. Novly keeps both kinds of book.

Novels get chapters and pages that break on their own. Picture books get an 800 by 600 canvas where text and illustration share the page, with pictures from Image Playground on your Mac.

Lewis Carroll's handwritten manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground, page 33: the White Rabbit, drawn in ink, scolds Alice beside the text.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, 1864, British Library, public domain. Film: “Writing with fountain pen”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

From first line to EPUB.

A minute

As long as it takes

Seconds

One click

First, pick a novel or a picture book, a genre and a language.

Then write, with AI help only when you ask for it.

Check the story for loose threads.

Export a print-ready PDF or an EPUB.

Before chapter one.

Yes. Novly has no subscription, credits or writing limits. If you connect a cloud AI provider, that provider bills your own account directly.

An Apple silicon Mac with macOS 26 or later. Apple Intelligence also depends on your device, language and region; local models and cloud AI work without it.

No. Everything about writing works without it. When you want help, choose Apple Intelligence, an open model on your Mac, Ollama, or a cloud provider you connect.

Your library is one file on your Mac. With on-device AI nothing leaves it. If you choose a cloud AI, the prompt and story context for that request go to that provider, under its terms.

Books from the Author Book web app come across in one import: chapters, characters, places, relationships, insights, portraits and episodes.

Download the signed, notarized disk image from GitHub and drag Novly to Applications. After that it keeps itself up to date.

Write on your Mac.

Free, for Apple silicon Macs (M1 or later). The signed disk image downloads straight from Novly's public releases.