ChangelogWhat’s new.

6.0.0 October 2026

Everything Falcontext Perch has had since 13 October, now in the extension and the desktop app too, with everything else since 5.0.0.

New

• Structure: mark the chapter or scene that is each beat of three acts, Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey or the Story Circle, and see how far each is from where the structure puts it, by word count, on a bar of the whole book. The beats are free; measuring the book against them is Pro.
• Notes to self: what you left in the text to come back to ([[like this]], or TK), with a Google Doc’s open comments and a WordPress post’s Notes, gathered in one place by chapter. In the desktop app, Word, LibreOffice and Scrivener comments and Scrivener’s inline annotations too.
• Places your book names, which chapters each is in, and where each chapter is set: guessed from the text, or set by hand, with places inside places (Pro).
• A glossary of your world’s own words, with a meaning suggested from where the book explains them (Pro).
• The Field Guide: everything Falcontext has worked out about your book in one document, for Word or as Markdown, or opened in Perch’s writing pad (Pro).
• Your plan: plan scenes before you write them, and see where the book keeps to it; the next planned scene shows on the Write tab (Pro).
• Writing days: which scenes grew on which day, and what was added, cut, moved or changed since.
• Dropped threads: what the story picks up and lets go, and world words that drop away, each with the moment that looks like its payoff to confirm (Did it pay off?).
• Continuity slips: someone who stands up while already standing, eyes or hair that change across the book, and timeline slips: a weekday the days don’t allow, or a season that changes within days (Pro).
• Head hopping: a scene told from inside one character that slips into another’s head (Pro).
• Character sheets: what the book says about each character’s looks, he, she or they, other names (“Also called”), family and a death, offered from the book for you to accept or turn down; the ★ in the matrix marks each part’s point-of-view character (Pro).
• One word or two: every day or everyday, may be or maybe, a while or awhile, and the words that are always two (alot, eachother) (Pro).
• A whole manuscript, checked at once: every document of a manuscript as one book, in the chapter order you confirm, with each check’s light and the documents it’s worst in.
• A full pass remembered: each full pass keeps its lights, and the next one says which checks got better or worse since.
• Words that came in at once (a paste, an import) are asked about before they count as today’s writing, in words today, records, streaks, badges and the challenge.
• A daily goal in minutes: words or minutes, whichever comes first (Pro), with a streak that counts only the days you met your goal, if you want one.
• The November challenge: join at falcontext.com/challenge/ with a pen name; the panel shows your words and pace, and you choose which documents and manuscripts count. Falcontext sends no name, only a key and daily numbers, never your text.
• Desktop app: Vellum books are counted and checked (the story’s parts in order, front and back matter left out), and the bar says which app each document is from.

Changed

• Free and Pro: free helps you write, Pro helps you finish the book. A Pro check on the free plan says how many things need a look, never which; the writing’s badges stay free, and new Pro badges are for shaping and finishing a book. The free plan has no ad banner, and Ad-Free is no longer sold (keys bought before keep working).
• License keys are checked by falcontext.com: Pro comes only from a pass falcontext.com signs once Lemon Squeezy says the key works. Only the key is sent, and nothing is kept; offline, a paying writer keeps Pro for up to 30 days. Pro and unlock buttons open the pricing page.
• A lighter Edit tab: checks that do the same job share one row (its light is the worst of its parts’, so nothing rates differently); each check shows what it found, one line per place, and links to its own page on falcontext.com for what it is and how to fix it.
• Every card folds to its title, remembered and synced; Customize layout has Reset to default; each light has a shape as well as a colour (circle, triangle, square), and screen readers hear every light.
• Characters gone too long is measured in words, with lines set from published novels and a slider to make it stricter or looser, and each character’s longest gap is shaded in the matrix.
• Checks tuned for fiction: readability and long paragraphs use lines set for fiction, and homophones and sound-alikes catch more slips (lose and loose, flour and flower, wet and whet, stationary and stationery, flair and flare, foreword and forward, a chest of draws, a grisly bear and more).
• Faster on a long book: the slow checks run side by side, an edit rechecks only the scenes it touched, and Characters and Places scan on their own buttons.

Fixed

• Counts: the extension never counts Perch’s page as words written today (a one-time repair takes out such a count on every device); a document that came through sync no longer gains words today from the newer word rule; two computers writing in different documents on one day add up; a Google Docs count is saved only for the document the panel is on.
• Dialogue: a line opened with one kind of quote mark and closed with the other is one line, not a false monologue; ’un and ’uns take an apostrophe, as ’em does.
• Names: chapters with the same title are told apart (“Mara (2)”); Mr and Mrs Morel are two people; a name that only starts sentences isn’t an adverb or a repeated word; places aren’t people (“Eoden City” isn’t Eoden).
• Sync: characters, places, the glossary, your plan and structure marks go to your other devices; a sprint open in two windows stops in both and counts once.
• License keys: a cancelled plan no longer stays Pro, and a panel closed before a key’s answer no longer uses up another activation.
• Desktop app: Scrivener’s inline annotations aren’t counted or checked (today’s starting count moves once, so words today and streaks don’t drop); chapters are found in Pages documents; a flat LibreOffice file’s pictures and charts aren’t counted as words; a document renamed only in letter case still recounts.
• Panel: every link has the house style and a focus ring; Focus Mode ends when its tab is closed; the finish-date estimate waits for a week of history; a page that can’t be read yet isn’t logged in Chrome’s error list; dates are in English.
• Many smaller fixes in Bird’s Eye, the grid’s ticks, Import Backup, Today’s Editing, records and the character matrix.

5.0.0 October 2026

New

• Write and Edit tabs in place of Tools: Write for the words you add today, Edit for going over the book. The first time Edit opens on a document, it finds the chapters, the names and what the checks say by itself; one button, Scan again, does all three after that.
• Slips as you write: doubled words, spacing slips, unfinished sentences and paragraphs pasted twice, found in today’s words (or everything since last time) while you write.
• A 38th check: paragraphs pasted twice. 9 of the 38 checks are free now.
• Fix in Google Docs: Fix, Fix all and Undo change the Google Doc itself. In WordPress, Atticus and Ellipsus, Fix types the change into the editor.
• The Edit tab’s grid of chapters and scenes: boxes fill with green as the checks turn green, a tick can be set by itself when every check is green, and a ✎ marks a ticked scene that has changed a lot since. Scenes worked on today and last time are marked; ticks follow their scene as you write, and merge box by box between computers.
• Today’s Editing: the words revised, removed and new today, two new records, and days of revising count for the editing streak.
• Every writing day counted: counting goes on with the panel closed, and, if you turn it on in Settings, on Google Docs, Ellipsus and Atticus without opening Falcontext at all. The trend graph shows the days it didn’t see.
• Ignore this one, here: drop a single finding and keep the rest of that check.
• Better character names: words capitalised only because they start a sentence are left out, “Sarah’s” counts as Sarah, and a title and its name (“Mr. Bennet”) or a two-word name (“Mary Ann”) stay together.
• Desktop app: one version with the extension from now on. Only one copy runs at a time; on the Mac it offers to move itself to Applications; Export backup, Export CSV and Download PNG ask where to save.

Changed

• Faster on a long book: the checks run in the background, so the panel and your typing don’t stop for them, and homophones are found faster.
• Homophones and sound-alikes catch more of the slips writers really make (its and it’s, then and than, their and there, lead and led, your and you’re and more), with fewer false alarms.
• A short scene’s traffic lights: one finding is a count, not a red light, and a scene is checked with the whole book’s names, tense and point of view.
• Dashes: the Chicago check no longer judges how you set dashes; Dashes flags a dash set differently from the rest, and number ranges typed with a hyphen. A scene break of dashes is no dash.
• Counting: Chinese and Japanese count each character as a word; words with accents are read whole; Google Docs smart chips are counted and suggestions aren’t; Word, LibreOffice and Scrivener files leave out hidden text, footnotes and furigana.

Fixed

• Counts: an imported or duplicated book, a scene moved between documents, or yesterday’s words from another device no longer count as written today; flying west across midnight keeps today’s words on today; a sprint is scored by its own words, even if it ends with the panel closed.
• Drive sync: settings, goals, ignored findings, sprints and records from two devices merge part by part instead of one replacing the other; turning sync off while signing in stays off.
• Switching documents in the middle of a read never saves one document’s chapters, report or revisions as another’s.
• License keys: a half-typed key never costs you Pro, keys are checked again each week, and characters tracked with Pro are hidden on the free plan, never deleted.
• Restoring a backup adds to what’s there and never takes anything away.
• Firefox: Settings’ scroll bar no longer fights the panel’s behind it; on Android, signing in to Google works.
• Desktop app: saved data survives a power cut mid-save; older Scrivener projects are counted; a document caught mid-save, missing at start or in a folder with a long path (Windows) is counted; the window never freezes on a missing drive; Focus Mode leaves Scrivener’s Composition Mode with Esc on Windows; a second Sign in click opens Google at once.
• Many smaller fixes in Bird’s Eye, the grid’s ticks, reminders, records, share images and the reader view.

4.2.2 October 2026

Changed

• More prose checks free: 8 of the 37 checks now show their details on the free plan (it was 4). New to free: filter words, doubled words, spacing slips and unfinished sentences, next to adverbs, passive voice, tense and point of view, and dialogue tags. On the free plan the other checks still show green, orange or red.
• Monologues across paragraphs: a long speech that runs over several paragraphs is now added up and found, not only one inside a single paragraph.
• Speech in single quotes (‘like this’) that runs over several paragraphs is read as dialogue, not narration, in every check.
• Dialogue tags and punctuation: “I said” counts as a tag, the next paragraph’s first words are no longer mistaken for one, and far fewer false alarms about a full stop after a line of speech.
• Sentences are no longer split after Mr., Mrs. or initials, or between “Stop!” and “she said”.
• The traffic lights for readability, long paragraphs and long sentences now follow published novels, not lines made for web pages. Readability counts syllables more accurately.
• Chapter borders: Pacing and chapter openings count words the same way Bird’s Eye does, so their chapters line up.
• Fewer false alarms in homophones, adverbs, filter words, doubled words, words written two ways, unfinished sentences and dated words; present-tense and UK spellings are counted in the word lists.
• Fix suggestions: better with number ranges, measurements, dots and dashes.

4.2.1 October 2026

Changed

• Homophones and sound-alikes catch far more: about 100,000 phrases from published fiction, two, three and four words long (“free reign”, “a poultry sum”), and rules for the pairs writers told me they mix up: discreet and discrete, wretched and retched, rein and reign, ring and wring, alot, waist and waste, duel and dual, bear and bare, conscience and conscious, affect and effect, and more.
• Passive voice: now finds “was built”, “was told” and “was quickly hidden”, and no longer counts “she was tired” or “he was often late”.
• The traffic lights are set from published novels: green is what most published books do.
• Fewer false alarms in tense and point of view, name slips, spelling, punctuation style and monologues (now over 250 words of speech). Repeated words leaves the most common words out.

4.2.0 October 2026

New

• Prose Analysis: 20 more checks, 37 in all. Homophones and sound-alikes (whose and who’s, then and than, “your welcome”), unfinished sentences, doubled words and marks, name spelling slips, spelling consistency (US or UK), words written two ways, dialogue punctuation, dialogue quotes, dashes, curly or straight quotes, ellipses, spacing slips, punctuation style (Chicago), punctuation habits, monologues, chapter openings, stage directions, “-ing” openers, uncommon words, and dated or hurtful words (off until you turn it on).
• Final draft: a tick beside Analyse Now makes every check stricter, for the last pass.
• Writing insights: reading time, and any word you choose followed through the book in the Character Tracker. In Bird’s Eye, what each chapter is about.
• Step through what a check found: tap a finding, and a bar at the foot of the panel goes from one to the next (‹ ›), in the page or the reader view.

Changed

• The checks about the narration leave dialogue out, and count only the narration’s words. Adverbs leave time words out; repeated words leave names and “said” out.
• Each finding is named for what it is, with counts, and long lists get Show all. Headings are never flagged.

4.1.1 September 2026

New

• Microsoft Edge, Brave and Arc: Google Docs tracking works there too, with Google’s own sign-in window.
• Sync through your Google Drive (optional, in Settings → Sync): your streak, history, goals and manuscripts, shared between browsers and the Falcontext app for Mac, kept in a hidden folder in your own Google Drive.
• WordPress: count every post in a category, drafts included, as one manuscript, with one goal and one streak (Pro).
• Prose Analysis: ten more checks – tense and point of view, dialogue tags, sentences starting the same way, sentence rhythm, paragraph length, telling emotions, your crutch words, weak constructions, the five senses and pacing per chapter – and a traffic light for every check, free. Tense and point of view and dialogue tags come with their details for free too. Anything that’s fine as it is can be ignored (×), and stays ignored.
• See it in your text: an eye next to each Prose Analysis check marks what it found right in your writing – in WordPress, Atticus and other web editors in the page itself, and for Google Docs in a reader view in the panel.
• A short getting-started page opens after you install Falcontext.
• A new icon: a falcon whose tail is a pen nib, writing a line.

Changed

• Synonym Checker: synonyms now come from a thesaurus built into Falcontext, so the word you look up isn’t sent anywhere, and it works offline. Colour words get their shades, and never a word from an unrelated or hurtful sense.

Fixed

• Bird’s Eye: the checkbox, name and count in the character list no longer overlap.
• In a browser without a side panel (Arc), Falcontext opens as a popup.
• Word files (.docx) opened in Google Docs are counted too.
• A page without a document on it (like Atticus’s list of your books) is no longer counted as one.
• A Pro or Ad-Free license bought on falcontext.com now unlocks it (it stayed on the free plan).
• Prose Analysis: the eye lights up when it’s on, and is crossed out when a check found nothing to mark.

4.0.0 September 2026

New

• Google Docs, with only the documents you allow: Falcontext now asks for access to each Google Doc you track, in Google’s own file picker, instead of access to all your documents. A small window opens on the document the first time; one click allows it, and your other tracked Google Docs can be allowed in the same go.
• Editing: type the words you edited today straight into the number in Today’s Progress, and save it right there.
• Recent Trend: a bar per day; hover one to see that day’s total and the words you added.
• License check: when a key is refused, Falcontext says why (for example, when it’s already active on as many devices as its plan allows).

Improved

• Goals of six digits and more are shown in full.
• All progress bars are the same size, with rounded ends.
• Bird’s Eye: what automatic chapter detection looks for is behind the info icon next to “Chapters & scenes”.
• “Unlock with Pro” is a link you can open or copy.

Fixed

• The side panel opens on the first click, also right after switching tabs.
• “Hide Pro previews” only applies while Ad-Free is active.