Weekend Read, our app for reading screenplays on the iPhone, will be adding two much-requested features in the next major update:
– iPad support, including the iPad mini
– iCloud syncing between your devices
The new features in Weekend Read require iOS 8.
If you’d like to join the beta, you can sign up here:
This truly is a beta; things will break. The good news is that the stable version of Weekend Read is always [on the App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8), so it’s simple to delete the beta and reinstall something solid.
We’ll be adding a few new testers each week, so we likely won’t get to everyone. But we definitely need a variety of users who can test the new version out in the wild, because a lot has changed under the hood.
## What’s new
Weekend Read 1.5 adds support for the iPad, both in portrait and landscape orientations. iPad support has been a long time coming, but was never urgent. Reading screenplay PDFs on the iPad isn’t bad even with current apps like GoodReader and PDFPro.
Weekend Read’s big advantage is that the app actually understands how screenplays work, so we can resize text, highlight characters, and offer Dark Mode. Even on the iPad, moving to a larger font size really helps reduce eye strain.
Weekend Read 1.5 is also much faster rendering screenplays, particularly on newer iPhones and iPads. You’ll rarely see the progress bar.
The bigger change — the one that’s been by far the most work for Nima Yousefi — is the addition of iCloud features.
Here’s what’s now possible:
– If you add a screenplay on your iPhone, it automatically shows up on your iPad. (And vice-versa.)
– You can organize scripts into folders.
– You can import entire folders at once from the For Your Consideration lists. So it’s now one tap to install all of the 2014 Awards scripts, for example.
– If you’re on a Mac with OS 10.10 Yosemite, you can drag screenplays into the iCloud Drive > Weekend Read folder. Super handy.
I should stress that all of the above bullet points are goals, not guarantees. Part of the reason we’re extending this beta beyond our friends and family is that there are a lot of edge cases in which things get wonky. If we can’t make a given feature work reliably, we’ll ship without it.
## The work ahead
Weekend Read, and the beta, are free.
When we release the new version, we plan to have all the new features available for folks who’ve unlocked the app via in-app purchase. So to get more users ready, we’ve dropped the upgrade price for the next two weeks from $10 to $5. If you’ve been waiting for a sale, this is it.
If you haven’t tried Weekend Read, you can find it [on the App Store](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8). We have 27 of the 2014 award contender scripts available to read, including nine of the Academy Award-nominated screenplays. We also have Scriptnotes transcripts going all the way back to first episode.