Welcome to Author!
Thank you for installing Author. Please get in touch should you have any questions: hello@augmentedtext.info
You may also be interested in our book and symposium on The Future of Text where we work with a wonderful community on really augmenting your tools for thought.
If you are using ‘Author Basic’ please note you can upgrade at any time by getting Author from the macOS App Store. You of course will keep all your documents. Please feel free to go through the Walkthrough to familiarise yourself with how Author works.
Author is built on the foundation that writing is thinking. ‘Nature’ covered this topic quite beautifully in a recent editorial†. As we put thoughts into words and sentences there are many decisions that need to be made to disambiguate what was previously relatively soft notions in our ‘wet’ brains. This process clarifies and crystalizes our thought, which can then present further questions of relationships and contexts as we develop our understanding. To deal with this, we work to shape our thoughts in the form of sentences, paragraphs, and (in software like Author) ‘Maps’ of knowledge. Authorship is hard work and like any serious endeavor, what counts will be your persistence, effort, and how well the tools you choose suit your work style. I certainly hope Author will suit your style.
You are also welcome to check out Author for Apple Vision Pro, where the concepts in Author’s Map become spatial.
Do this first: Full Screen [ESC]: I strongly suggest that you hit [ESC] on your keyboard to toggle in and out of full screen. This is not standard macOS behavior but I found it useful to be able to switch to and from full screen quickly — giving you a clean and uninterrupted writing space when you want to, but quick access to other applications.
Then this: Settings. Please start by going through the options you have available in ‘Settings’, lower right in any window. This is where you make Author truly yours.
And now this: Control-Click: To control Author you generally select text and Control-click (or two-finger click on a trackpad) to get a contextual menu. Try it now! Next to the items you will see the keyboard shortcuts, which I strongly urge you to learn over time. If you like to really get to grips with your work, they will really let you fly through it. Please note that the Context Menu is different on selecting text and when you don’t select text, as well as in the Map whether you select nothing, one node or several.
Quick Start!
You can use Author any way you choose, but as a guide, I recommend that you simply start writing, even though you may not be sure what your final text will be–you can always delete and edit–allowing you to grow your thoughts.
To kick-start writing, Author can help generate your outline and give you expert advice.
You can write about what you want to write about, or paste your assignment, select the text, Control-Click and choose ‘Copy’ and ‘Generate Outline’ from the submenu which will use AI to generate an outline based on what you have written, for you to paste into your document as a starting point for what to write.
You can also use AI by clicking ‘Ask AI’ bottom left and choose ‘Expert Advice’ for inspiration. Note: If you have selected text before doing this command it will only take into account the selected text but if you did not select any text Author will take into account all the text in your document.
Mapping Concepts: Another way to think while writing is to ‘Map’ your thoughts out on a ‘magical napkin’ which is what the Map function of Author is. It is a bit different but I strongly suggest you play around with it.
Export
Export can only be done in the full version of Author, not Author | Basic, so if you are using Author | Basic, please go to the macOS App Store and purchase the full version of Author. You can of course also copy all the text from Author into other software, which is fine if it suits your needs.
Please note that when you Export you can choose the citation style of your document, independently of how you would like to see citations in Author as you write, something which you can change in Settings.
Writing
Author is designed to help you author documents, hence the name; it is not designed for page layout. Therefore you cannot change font for specific text, only for the whole document (in Settings/Appearance). Similarly, you can scale the text as much as you like (View/Text Size) but this will only be for your view, it will not affect the text size for anyone else reading your document in Author or when exported.
Focus Mode. Sometimes a huge amount of text in a long document can be a bit much: if so, try Focus mode (⌘-/) where all the text is greyed out except around the current section (as defined by a heading for the section and the next heading marking the end of the section), making it easier to read and proofread specific text. The text inside your focus is shown plain, without any Marking, since the Marking is designed to help you navigate the full document. Please put your cursor here to try it.
Organizing Your Documents
New in this version of Author is the ability to assign ‘Tags’ to your documents to help you organize them. These are the very same Tags you have available on the desktop and they are now integrated into Author to quickly let you organize and find your documents. Instead of hidden away by the name of your document you can now assign these tags in the Export dialog in Author with a simple click, in addition to stating (through a pop-up) if your document is in ‘Draft’ stage, which is the default option, is ‘Done’ or if it is ‘Archived’.
You can also click to ‘Pin’ your document, in which case it will show up in the ‘Pinned’ menu in Author at the very top of the screen, for quick access, as well as with the ‘Pined’ tag on your desktop and in the Open dialog. This is intended to give you quick access to documents you are currently working on, much like leaving them on your desk. I recommend that you assign color to your Tags, which can do on your desktop by control/two-finger tapping on them.
You can also Edit the Tags to make them your own.
In our experience this means that the Tags become more useful, when used in combination with folders. Since this is a new feature I am particularly interested in your feedback please.
• To Tag, go to the Export dialog (⌘-shift-E), click on the tags at the top, then ‘Save’ or ‘Export’ if you’d like to export your text at the same time.
Organizing & Viewing Your Text {Key Author Features!}
Headings. You can organize your document by creating Headings. You really should do this since it will help you navigate and organize immensely.
• To create a heading, select the text you want to turn into a heading, control-click on it and choose from the Heading submenu, or do ⌘-1 for Level 1, ⌘-2 for Level 2 and so on.
• To see what level a heading is, and to assign useful information, ⌘-click on the heading.
Outline. To view your documents as Headings folded into an Outline:
• Click on ‘Outline’ at the bottom of the document, or ⌘- – (command-minus)
• You can then toggle to also see ‘Keywords’, which you can edit in ‘Settings’, and ‘Citations’
• You can specify in Settings if you want to add Color to your Keywords and what other elements to see, in Setting’s ‘View’ tab
• To Fold to only see Headings, without other information, pinch-closed on your trackpad or press ⌘- - (minus)
• To exit the Outline without clicking to jump, you can [ESC]
Mark Text. Marking Text is designed to help you skim our documents. Marked text appears by default as bold, orange text, as shown here.
When you fold your document into an Outline, this text appears under each heading.
As advice for using this function I would suggest that you Mark full sentences, not just highlights, because then when you fold into Outline you can follow the text more easily. As for what to Mark, I suggest assertions, while leaving the explanations, elucidations and support as regular text. In other words write to yourself and a reader who is familiar with the work with text you will Mark, usually at the start of a paragraph, and leave further information for someone you expect needs more explanation as regular text.
As with many aspects of Author, you can change the appearance of Marked text in Settings in the Appearance tab.
• To Mark text, select it, control-click and choose ‘Mark’ or press ⌘-’ (single quote).
• On Export, you can choose whether the Marked text should stay Marked, rendered as normal body text, or be removed.
Private Comments. You may also want to do the opposite of Marking text and write comments which are only for you.
• To turn your text into Comments, select it, control-click and choose Comment or press ⌘-Shift-’ (single quote).
• On Export this text will not be included, unless you choose otherwise (with options similar to what to do with Marked text).
Contract Text is a new function to help you manage long documents by contracting text into ‹‹guillemets›› The text on the next line has been contracted like this, for you to click on to expand: ››
Heading Notes. You can add notes to headings to remind yourself of what you need to do with a section and other information.
• ⌘-click on heading and type your Heading Note
• Once created, the Heading Notes will be visible when you ⌘-click on the Heading again and when you fold your document into an Outline
Navigating
Find. Being able to quickly perform a Find operation allows you to have a good overview of your work. For example if you wonder if you have written about a specific term you can instantly check.
• Select text and ⌘-F to see everywhere the text is found in the document, as a list of all occurrences with their context. This is not standard macOS behavior as you don’t need to re-type the text, just select and do the keyboard shortcut and instead of yellow highlights in the document only the sentences with the text appears.
• Either click on a particular occurrence to jump there, or ⌘-F again (or [ESC] to dismiss this view.
Link to Document. You can Control-click on without selecting space/on empty space for the option to Link Document (⌘-shift-D). It can be useful to not have everything in one document but to connect your work by connecting documents. For example if you write a long entry in your Journal and then decide to have it as a separate document you can link to it:
• First select the text then Cut it, create a New Document, Paste, Save.
• In the original document ⌘-shift-D and locate the document. You can now click on this link to instantly open the document when you need it
Arrow Keys. You can use the regular keyboard shortcuts to move your cursor around the document and you can also navigate quickly by jumping to the next section/heading with a click:
• Next Heading option-⌘-\/ (arrow down)
• Previous Heading option-⌘-/\ (arrow up)
• Next Level 1 Heading option-⌘-> (arrow right)
• Previous Heading option-⌘-< (arrow left)
• End of Document ⌘-\/ (arrow down)
• Beginning of Document ⌘-/\ (arrow up
Defining Concepts For Thinking
You can define what you are writing about as you go along, which may seem odd, since that is what writing is. But bear with me: the benefit is that the process of intentionally defining what you are writing about actively helps you learn & understand what you are writing about, since you ‘spell out’ what you are writing about. Note that anything is a concept in this context, even people and places.
• Select text and ⌘-D to Define it. Then write freely what it is. You can also add keywords if you like — you can do anything: this is to help you think and mentally connect.
This is about augmenting your thinking. You define a concept simply by writing what you feel it is — this is about your point of view and how you see the concepts in your work — not by writing a neutral dictionary definition (they already exist).
Connected Concepts. When you write a definition and something you write already has a definition assigned to it, that text becomes bold and you can click on it to jump to that definition. This is a useful way to navigate around your own defined concepts network.
Export as Glossary. When you Export your work to PDF, you can choose to have the Defined Concepts exported as a Glossary so that your readers may benefit from the knowledge connections you’ve defined.
Ask AI. You can use the Ask AI function in the bottom left of your document to ‘Define Concepts’ which where the AI (as set in Settings) will try to create new Defined Concepts to help you get started.
Ask AI in Defined Concept Dialog. If you select a term and do cmd-D you will have an option to ‘Define from Document’ which will result in the AI going through your document to define it based on what you have written.
Mapping Thought
The Map in Author is designed to help you think with text in a freeform but easily changeable space, whether as defined concepts, notes or links to external documents.
Concepts
In the Map view you can see everything you have Defined. When you select something you will see lines going from the selected concept to any other concepts mentioned in their definition. Double-click on a Defined Concept to open the Define Concepts dialog where it is recommended that you specify the category of what your concept is, such as a person or a location, to make it easy to see them and select them later.
• Toggle Map. ⌘-M to toggle between your Writing and Map views.
• Master Map. Option-⌘-M to spawn your Master Map, which is the Map view in your Journal.
• Add Concepts. ⌘-D on text you written or pasted in the Map to Define it. This text can be exported in a Glossary if you so choose when you are done.
Notes
You can also add other information, including just plain text notes, links to documents and more:
• Add Plain Notes. Double-click on the Map and type anywhere to add text. This text will not be exported in a Glossary.
Documents
Add Link to Document. Control-click on the Map and choose Add Link to Document or ⌘-Shift-D which will present you with a Defined Concept dialog with a button bottom right to ‘Connect’ to any document on your computer. This allows you to organize your documents and to nest Maps.
Because this is a Defined Concept dialog you can write notes about the document, paste in the beginning (or full) text of the document or even us the Keywords AI prompt to analyze the document and paste the result here, so that you can have keywords on your Map which will connect to the document where the keyword is found.
Add Link to Map. This is exactly the same as adding a link to a document but when you double-click to open it, it opens into the Map view: ⌘-Shift-M.
Mapping Documents. You may want to connect many documents from your Map, perhaps from your Journal. Doing this gives you the opportunity to specify more about what different documents are and what state they are in.
Organizing Documents. An example is specifying which documents are you current working on:
• Start out with adding a keyword to your Map, such as ‘Marked’ (it could also be ‘Urgent’, ‘In Progress’ etc. — anything that is useful to you)
• Select Marked and ⌘-D (or Control-click and ‘Define’). You don’t actually have to write any definition but you can if you like to. The important thing is that by choosing to Define it, it can now be connected to. Note that text on the Map which is not defined will not be connected to
• Now when you add a document and add the text ‘Marked’ in the definition, you can click on Marked and a line will appear to the document.
• Try it in this document by going to the Map view (⌘-M or click Map at the bottom of the window) and then click Marked at top left. Note: The reason Marked is orange is that this is the category it is defined as, you can make it any category you like, this is just included to reflect the use of Marked in the Writing view
Citations
You can now Map your citations in the same was as you can Map your defined concepts! Just add a citation to your document and it will appear in your Map, where you can choose to see Concepts & Citations, Concepts or Maps.
Layout and Interactions
You have options to help you manage what you see. Bottom right in the Map view you have two controls:
• Show. Click on ‘Show’ at the bottom right to decide what to view. This is useful for managing large Maps.
• Layout. On setting more than one item click ‘Layout’ at bottom right for options for alignment, spacing and sorting.
Context Menu
The context Menu provides powerful means to interact with your Map:
• On Selecting No items (control clicking on empty space):
- Add, with a sub menu where you an choose what to add to the Map
- List of Categories available for you to select
• On Selecting a Single Item and control-clicking gives you a context menu with options to:
- Edit Defined Concept
- Edit Title
- Select Connected
- Select Similar
• On Selecting a Group and control-clicking gives you a context menu with options to:
- Contract is similar to ‘Contract’ in the Writing view. It takes whatever nodes you had selected and hides them so to reduce clutter by Contracting them into a node with a name you choose, inside ‹‹Name›› which you an click on to see all the contracted nodes or delete. When you have clicked on ‹‹Name›› you can hit ‘tab’ to select the hidden nodes, which you can then interact with.
- Hide Not Selected to give you a clearer view in dense Maps. Choose command again or deselect to cancel.
- Select Connected change the selection from the note you clicked on to only those it connects to. This allows you to use the Layout options and to move these nodes where you want. This is quite powerful, please experiment with it.
- Select Similar as above.
- Layout as in Layout and Interactions above.
Ask AI
You have access to Ask AI to analyze your map bottom left:
• Click ‘Ask AI’ at the bottom left to analyze your Map. You can also Export to OPML (for example, you can also add your own)
XR
Bottom left you have an option for XR. We are current experimenting with connecting this to XR (VR/AR) headsets so that you can continue working on your Maps using your whole room as the workspace: https://futuretextlab.info
• Click ‘XR’ to upload your Map to a VR scene, which you can view in the Apple Vision Pro or other VR headset.
AI for Augmentation
In these early days of the age of AI this is pertinent to look at how AI should support you in your work since getting an answer is not the same as developing an understanding and Author is designed to augment how you develop your understanding of what you are writing and how you can clearly communicate it. In other words, whether you are a student, academic, scientist or work in industry, AI can do your work or your homework, but it cannot learn for you. AI in Author is designed to help you in many ways, not just as a chat-agent. First of all, you might want to go to Settings (bottom right) and click on the ‘You’ tab and enter information about yourself for the AI. This is private and is not shared outside of the AI prompt. As for the AI prompt itself, in the ‘Ask AI’ tab in Settings you can specify if you want to use only the Apple Intelligence on your computer or of you want it to send your prompt to ChatGPT if it needs it, based on how much text you select.
Please note that ChatGPT is a paid for service since we have to pay for it and Apple will not allow us to let you use your own ChatGPT key. Apple Intelligence is free but only supports smaller amounts of text.
All the AI commands (except for generating metadata for Export) are based on selecting relevant text that you want the AI to look at. If you do not select specific text the command will apply to the whole document.
Personal AI
Note that you can customize the AI. Note that none of this information is shared outside of your installed Author software and the AI provider, which is currently ChatGPT. In Settings you can:
• Edit all the Prompts†
• Enter information about who you are in the ‘You’ tab. This is sent to ChatGPT along with your prompt and text to tailor the response to who you say you are
• You can choose to run Apple Intelligence on your local Mac, without sending any information to ChatGPT, in Settings/Ask AI.
Ask AI from Toolbar
• ⌘-⇧-/ opens the Ask AI menu in the toolbar, bottom left. You can now choose click on a command or start typing the command and then press ‘Return’ to execute or hit ‘enter’ to type your own, new question.
• Settings/‘Ask AI’ to edit any Prompt
Inspire. This command is based on the perspective that thoughts flow through our brains based on what connections are available to us from our prior knowledge. The question follows that how can we access connections which are not already available to us? How can we see connections which we are not already predisposed for? This is a research question for the development of Author. One approach is the Defining & Mapping of Concepts. AI is now also part of our world and we are not interested in adding functionality to replace human thought — we do not want to build commands in Author to write for you. My goal with Author is to help you do the thinking. The idea behind the ‘Spark Imagination’ prompt is to take what you have written and return an analysis and a suggestion which should be non-obvious, to spark your imagination to think further about the text. Since the aim of this command is to help you get a look at different ways to see what you are writing about, please be reminded that you can edit this prompt in Settings (as with all the prompts) to suit who you are. You might want to change the introduction to better reflect the kind of writing you are doing, for example.
& More. You can edit and add prompts in Settings, at the bottom right of this window.
Ask AI through Copy & Paste
You can do control-⌘-V (or ctrl-click and choose ‘Insert’) to Paste Processed, meaning that the text will be pasted after being processed by an Ask AI prompt. By default it will check if the copied text is in English and if it is not, first translate it, and then clean it up, on the assumption that the text might have been copied from the Web, a PDF or spoken by you using Speech to Text. You can edit this Prompt in Settings to do whatever is most useful to you.
You can also use Ask AI on Copy, by selecting text and going into the ‘Copy’ context menu, to choose what the AI should process for you, such as extracting–and therefore only copying–keywords, names and so on.
Journalling
In addition to working with regular documents, you can also launch your Journal. Note that this is a regular Author document with the only differences being that you can instantly launch it with the keyboard shortcut and you can’t easily accidentally delete it.
• Option-⌘-J to spawn the Journal
• Option-⌘-1 to insert today’s date as Heading
Store Citations. You can use your Journal for research notes because when you add a citation (manually, from a book or from pasting from Reader), you can click on the citation at any time and not only will you see the citation information, you will also have the useful option to Copy the citation. You can then paste into any Author document. If you pasted the citation from Reader, you also have the option to Open the citation, which instantly opens the PDF you cited in Reader. Remember that when you paste a citation it will automatically be formatted for you on Export, including adding it to the Reference section.
Ask AI Assistance. Note that if you keep your journal somewhat up to date, you can use the Journal Ask AI prompt to analyze your Journal. This way you can easily measure your progress and changes.
Organize your Journal using Author functions, including Marking text to later find what you thought was worth making to find later. If you write down a quote or something you’d like to use in the future, simply Mark it and it’ll be easier to see as you skim through. Similarly, I can recommend marking your text as a Comment if it’s an action item which you should follow up on but which may disappear as your Journal gets longer.
You can access these commands by selecting text and choosing Mark or Comment.
Note also that they appear in your Outline, where Marked text appears as regular text and Comment text in red, to make sure you don’t miss it.
Mapping Concepts. You can map concepts in your Journal as you can with any other document. The Map in your Journal we call your ‘Master Map’.
Mapping Documents. You can also map your documents. This means that, in effect, the Map view in your Journal can become where you organize your documents spatially. When you do this, you can add descriptions to the documents you are linking to which is useful for organizing your work:
Magic Margins
You have what we call Magic Margins on either side of your document in full screen mode, and only in full screen mode. They are there because sometimes you just need to jot down some notes, thoughts or keywords which you may or may not write about later. These are notes to help you write: they will not be exported and they will not move with the document when you scroll. When you click away from the Magic Margin, the text will fade away so as to not be intrusive, and come back when you click in the Magic Margin again, though you can turn this off in Settings.
Citing
Citing is often the bane of academic writing but it is also the connective web of academic discourse. Author focuses on ways to help you cite quickly and robustly while not having to spend any time at all fiddling with References on export. In Author you can cite books by searching from them, PDF documents from Reader or by pasting their DOI, and more.
⌘-T
• ⌘-T to see a range of options. If you had copied text it will appear in the text entry dialog and below it will be options for:
Manual Entry. This will you allow to enter the citation information by typing it manually.
Placeholder. This not actually a citation, it’s just a convenient way for you to note down that you will need a specific citation in a specific place. Enter whatever will remind you of what you plan to cite and ‘Enter’. The text will appear in double brackets, like this ((reminder to add a citation here)) This is easy for you to see when you look through your document but more importantly it will appear when you click on ‘Outline’ and then ‘Citations’, making quick work of seeing what is missing. A bonus is that when you click on it, the Citation dialog will open again and you can now choose to use this text to search Books or Papers.
Papers. You have an option to search for Papers using our Web Browser. This will search Google Scholar and then you can use the process below to Paste your citation. You can also ‘Copy to Cite’ from Reader and paste that here, such as (Anderson & Millard 2023).
Books You can have the citation information retrieved for you for books by choosing the ‘Books’ option. As an advanced option, you can even take a picture of a page of a book you are reading, then select that text using Apple’s Live Text feature, paste it in here and use it to search for the book. This works because Author uses the Google Books database. An example would be citing Peak Human (Norberg 2025).
Cite Web. You can cite from the web with some assist by Author. Copy text in Safari, ⌘-T and choose ‘From Safari Copy’ which will fill in the available citation information for you, apart from the author’s name (since that can’t be extracted from the web page). This also works for YouTube.
Options on Pasting
You can copy the BibTeX or DOI from an academic PDF (or its download location) and paste it in Author to have it resolved into a citation for you automatically. If you use Author’s free companion application Reader, you can just copy text and paste it in to Author and it will appear as a full citation. See https://www.augmentedtext.info/reader for more details. ⌘-V to paste.
Citing Images
To add an image to your document you can drag and drop from your desktop or Photos.
• Click on any image you have dragged into Author to add citation information
Citation Display
You a choose in Settings/Appearance how citations should appear when you write, from (Author, Date), to (Initial Date) and (Title, Initial Date), whatever suits your style. On Export you can independently specify citation style.
Linking
To add a Web Link. Paste the link. You can also append a Web Link to text but this does not stay live on Export and is therefore not recommend.
To add an Internal Link to a Heading. Select text and ⌘-⇧-K to link to a heading within your own document. The text will then change from the body text font to the heading font, to indicate that the link is to a heading and that the reader of your exported PDF can click on it. You can do ⌘-[ to return to where you clicked the link.
To add an Internal Link to an Image. Select text and ⌘-⇧-K to link to an image within your own document. As with linking to a Heading (above), the text will then change from the body text font to the heading font, to indicate that the link is to a heading and that the reader of your exported PDF can click on it. You can do ⌘-[ to return to where you clicked the link. For Example: Endnotes
To add a Document Link. ⌘-⇧-D or control-click/Link Document to link to a local document, allowing you basic Hypertext linking within your own workspace. These links are not currently exported but we are looking into how this can be done.
Endnotes
Endnotes are used for adding notes to your documents. Since Author is not page-based, you can’t add footnotes. The Endnote you add will be indicated by a dagger† symbol.When you export, the PDF will contain an Endnote section and the dagger will be replaced by a superscript letter which, if the PDF is opened in Reader — and you chose to augment the document with Visual-Meta — you can click on to see the Endnote text in a pop-up. Otherwise it will simply appear in the Endnotes Appendix.
• ⌘-E for the Endnote Dialog.
Cuttings
All the text you ‘Cut’ remains stored with your document in Cuttings, so you don’t need to stress about losing it. Note that text you ‘Copy’ will not be in Cuttings, nor will text you Cut and then Paste, because in both cases the original text has not disappeared.
• Control-V to see your Cuttings or ctrl-click for the Context Menu to see Cuttings.
Dictate
To turn on and off speech-to-text, press 🌐D (or fn-D on some keyboards), or Control-click and choose Start Dictation. To insert a punctuation mark or perform simple formatting tasks, do any of the following:
• Say the name of the punctuation mark, such as “exclamation mark” or “full stop”/“period” (in UK/US English)
• Say “new line” (same as pressing Return) or “new paragraph” (same as pressing Return twice). After you say “new line”, the new line only appears when you’ve finished dictating
• When you’ve finished, press the dictation keyboard shortcut or Return, or click Done in the feedback window.
• More dictation commands are on the official Apple Page.
Paste LaTeX
Author supports basic LaTeX export in the Export menu, with options to Copy various elements into your template. If you create something in a specialized LaTeX editor, such as a mathematical equation, you can copy it from there and then paste into Author to be kept as LaTeX on export. To do this control-click on empty space where you want to paste and choose ‘Paste/As LaTeX for Export’
This pastes the LaTeX in a format which Author keeps plain for export, so that it appears correctly when you then copy to LaTeX from the Export dialog to render your document in a LaTeX template.
Continuous Backup
Author supports macOS Time Machine so you can easily go back to earlier versions of your document. To access an earlier version, choose File/Revert to/‘Last Opened’ or ‘Browse all versions…’ You don’t need to save your document as you work, since it’s continually backed up.
• Each time you save using ⌘-S, that becomes a version you can go back to easily.
Export
Please note that Export is only available with the full version of Author, not Author | Basic
Formats
The options for Export include standard formats and PDF with automatic cover page, table of contents, in-body citations and references, as well as a Glossary based on your Defined Concepts (to help your audience read your work), augmented with Visual-Meta, and JSON sidecar documents for XR and other views.
• ⌘-⇧-E to Export
• To insert page breaks, use ⌘-Return in your document where you would like to insert them
Augmented PDF (Visual-Meta) Your finished document likely will need to be in a specific format. This usually results in a ‘frozen’ document, in terms of how you can interact with it, but in Author you can augment your document with ‘Visual-Meta’, a modern metadata approach which is part of the Future of Text initiative. Your document then will have additional functions when opened in Reader, such as the ability to copy text as a citation, fold into an outline using ⌘ – (command ‘minus’, like in Author), and more. This done through automatically creating an appendix with useful information about your document, including your name, the document title (not just the document filename), organized references and endnotes, who wrote which section (in the case you are publishing a Journal) and more, which can be used not only by software like our own Reader, but also by AI systems to better understand and analyze your document, as well as emerging XR/VR systems. https://visual-meta.info for more information.
LaTeX and Markdown (Beta). You can export to LaTeX and Markdown where you are given the option to copy components to systems external to Author which are known to you, such as Overleaf.com Note also that you can simply paste Markdown into Author and it will be converted.
JSON. We are experimenting with JSON Canvas export from the File>Export To menu, when you are in Map. This is for XR experiences.
Options
You will have several options for how the document should be formatted, which we hope you will go through and that they will be useful for you.
AI on Export. You have options for AI Abstract and Keyword adding, which we hope you will go though and approve before export, in which can you may choose to remove the auto-appended ‘[Abstract generated by ChatGPT, approved by Author.]’ text. This can be added to your cover page automatically and to the document metadata if you choose to add Visual-Meta.
You will also have an option, which may be a little to hidden, for which we apologize but the Export dialog was getting quite heavy, with ‘AI Document Check’ bottom right, next to the ’Export’ button. This will run a multi-section prompt on your whole document to first give you a summary to see if what you felt the document is what is interpreted, comments on language and clarity, as well as on your argument and potential factual issues.
If you have Author | Basic you can upgrade to the full Author any time to export your documents, you will not lose any current documents. You can also copy text from Author to other software should you prefer (even the full document), but this does not give you the benefit of the export formatting.
Companion Software
Reader: PDF Viewer. If you read PDF documents alongside Author, you can benefit from using our software ‘Reader’ which is a fast minimalist PDF reading environment where you can copy text and paste it as citations into Author documents: www.augmentedtext.info
Liquid: Instant Text Interactions. Select any text and use the custom keyboard shortcut to search (and more) with it using Liquid. Alternatively, select text in Author and Control-click and choose Liquid. To see how it works, and to download, go to: www.augmentedtext.info/liquid. We are very proud of Liquid and think you will appreciate how it will let you work at the speed of thought. It’s a bit difficult to explain what it is so please try it. Remember, it’s free!
XR / VR / AR
As part of our work on The Future of Text (which you can read about and participate in at https://futuretextlab.info/) we are are working on text in XR (eXtended Reality/Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality–in other words–in a headset). This is an ongoing ‘experiment to experience’ working with text in XR and we have started by letting you export, or upload, the Map view from your document to XR, both in Export and from the Map itself. You can also try Author for Vision Pro.
‘The Future of Text’
Author is designed by me, Frode Hegland, inspired by the philosophy of my mentor Doug Engelbart. The notion that we can influence the future of how we interact with text is my passion. Author is part of a wider initiate on The Future of Text, which you are very welcome to join, if you are at all interested in how the tools of text interaction could and should develop. We host annual Symposia (for a decade and a half so far), have published 6 books, and host open Monday sessions, of which we have recorded over 500, which you are very welcome to join at any time.
Please feel free to join us: https://thefutureoftext.org.
Frode Alexander Hegland, PhD
The Augmented Text Company
London 2026