Getting started

Install, look round the example, start a project of your own.

Install

Bakspace runs on macOS, on Apple silicon and Intel. Windows and Linux are on the way, and the same licence will cover them.

Download it from the home page, open the file and drag Bakspace into Applications. The first fourteen days are a free trial with everything switched on; it starts the first time Bakspace is online. What happens after that is under Your licence.

Home and the example

The first time Bakspace opens, it builds an example to look round: Pride and Prejudice, in its three volumes and 61 chapters, with notes on the people and places in it. Press Continue to open it. Change anything you like; it is yours to break. Remove sends it to the Trash when you are done with it.

Home, with the example project Pride and Prejudice ready to continue — Home shows the project you were last in, the document you had open and your last sentence.

Home always opens on the project you were last in, at the document you had open. Other projects are listed below it. Each has a … menu, which right-click opens too:

Forget… takes the project off the list. Nothing on the disk is touched; open the folder again to bring it back.
Move to Trash… asks first, then moves the project folder to the Trash, where it waits until you empty it.

The menu of the example project on Home, offering Forget — The example offers Forget beside its Remove button; your own projects add Move to Trash.

Start a project of your own

New project asks for a folder. Choose an empty one, or make one in the picker; that folder becomes the project, named after the folder. If the folder already holds a Bakspace project, it opens instead. Open folder (Cmd O) opens a project you already have.

A new project starts empty. Cmd N makes the first document and Cmd Shift N a folder to put documents in.

The window

A project open: the binder on the left, the page in the middle, the inspector on the right

The binder on the left holds the whole project: the manuscript, the research beside it and the Trash. See Organising.
The page in the middle is the document you selected. See Writing.
The inspector on the right holds the document's synopsis, label, status and keywords, its comments, and who and what it mentions.
Along the top: the sidebar switch, Typewriter, Write and Focus, History and Inspector.

There is no save button. Every change is written to disk a moment after you make it. More in Where your words live.

Cmd K searches every document and every command, which is the quickest way to anything you cannot see.