Projects & Files

Every Throughline project is a .thrl file, saved wherever you choose: your Documents folder, an external drive, any folder you like. You can see it, move it, copy it, and send it like any other document.

There’s no account and no Throughline cloud. Your files go where you put them, and nowhere else.

The home screen

Throughline opens on the home screen. Under Recently opened you get a card for each of the six project files you opened most recently, showing where the file lives and when you last opened it. The top three also show their logline, cast, and beat count. Click a card to pick up where you left off.

Three buttons sit above the list:

• Create New Project: asks for a title and, if you have one, a logline, then asks where to save the file.
• Open…: opens an existing .thrl file.
• Import Screenplay: brings in a Fountain, Final Draft, PDF, or plain text screenplay as a new project, then asks where to save it. See Importing.

Below them, the Demos section holds the bundled demo project, ready to explore.

The card menu

Each card has a ⋮ menu:

• Show in Finder (on Windows, Show in Explorer): jumps to the file on disk.
• Save a Copy…: writes a copy of the project to a new file.
• Remove from list: takes the card off your home screen. The file itself is never touched.

The demo’s card has Save a Copy… and Delete. Save a copy of the demo if you’d like to keep building on it as your own project.

When a file has moved

If a project’s file was moved, renamed, or deleted outside Throughline, its card says “File not found. Click to locate it.” and offers two ways forward:

• Locate…: point Throughline at the file’s new place.
• Save elsewhere…: saves the project to a new file, so nothing is lost even if the original is gone.

Opening a project

Open… (Cmd+O on macOS, Ctrl+O on Windows) opens a .thrl file itself, not a copy of it: everything you change is saved back to that file. You can also double-click a .thrl file in Finder or Explorer.

To work on a copy instead, open the project and use Save a Copy….

Saving

Throughline saves as you go. There’s no Save command to remember.

Most of the time you won’t see any save status at all. A message appears beside the project title only when something needs your attention:

• “Couldn’t save, retrying”: Throughline couldn’t write to the file for a moment and keeps trying.
• “File not found”: the file was moved or deleted while the project was open. Click Save elsewhere… to save it to a new location.

File commands

On macOS these live in the File menu. On Windows the same shortcuts work with Ctrl.

Command	Shortcut
New Project…	Cmd/Ctrl+N
Open…	Cmd/Ctrl+O
Save a Copy…	Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+S
Open Recent (macOS)
Show in Finder

Inside a project, click the project title in the top bar to open the project menu, which has Save a Copy…, Show in Finder (on Windows, Show in Explorer), and Restore from Autosave.

Autosaves

On top of saving every change, Throughline keeps regular autosaves of your project in a folder named <project name>_autosaves, right next to your .thrl file. Pick how often they’re made and how many to keep in Settings.

Some copies are kept because of a decision you made, and those carry a label in their name, such as (changed elsewhere), or (legacy THRL 1.5) for the original of a file updated from an older version. Those are never deleted automatically.

Every autosave is a normal .thrl file. Double-click one to open it as its own project, look around, and take what you need.

Restoring an autosave

Restore from Autosave, in the project menu, lists the project’s autosaves, plus any backups made by earlier versions of Throughline. Restoring keeps your current state in the autosaves folder first, so a restore can always be undone.

When a file changes elsewhere

If the open project’s file is changed outside this window, for example on another computer, Throughline never swaps it in silently. A dialog, “This file was changed elsewhere”, explains what happened and offers three choices. Each one keeps both versions:

• Load the changed file: replaces what’s open with the file. What was open is kept in the autosaves folder.
• Keep what’s open here: saves what’s open over the file. The changed file is kept in the autosaves folder.
• Keep both as separate files…: saves what’s open as a new file, then loads the changed file in this window.

Files from other versions of Throughline

• Saved by a newer version: Throughline asks before opening it, because editing it here may lose anything that uses newer features. Choose Open Anyway, Update Throughline, or Cancel.
• Saved by an earlier version: the file needs to be updated to open. This doesn’t change any of your content, and the original is kept in the autosaves folder, labelled with its format version, such as (legacy THRL 1.5). Choose Update or Cancel.

Using more than one computer

Throughline doesn’t sync anything itself, but a project file opens on any computer with Throughline installed. If you move your files between computers yourself, avoid editing the same project in two places at the same time. If it happens anyway, the changed elsewhere dialog keeps both versions.

Upgrading from an earlier Throughline

Earlier versions of Throughline kept projects in a library inside the app. The first time you launch this version, Throughline asks you to move them out: click Export Projects…, choose a folder, and each project is saved there as a .thrl file, including in a folder synced by Dropbox, Google Drive, or Syncthing. Your exported projects then wait for you under Recently opened. The demo stays built in.