The latest version of Scrivener for Mac is version 3.2.3, and requires macOS Sierra or newer. There is no official release for Linux, but there is a public beta version which has been abandoned but still is available to use. Current version is 1.2.1 and requires iOS 9+. Scrivener for iOS was launched July 20, 2016. In 2011, a Windows version of the software was released, written and maintained by Lee Powell.

It is built mostly on libraries and features of Mac OS X from version 10.4 onward. Keith Blount created, and continues to maintain, the program as a tool to help him write the 'big novel', allowing him to keep track of ideas and research. One computer programmer has called Scrivener 'an IDE for writing'.

Because of its breadth of interfaces and features, it has positioned itself not only as a word processor, but as a project management tool for writers, and includes many user-interface features that resemble Xcode, Apple's integrated development environment (IDE). Scrivener allows photos, URLs, and multiple other file formats, to be dragged into its interface as well. Features include a corkboard, the ability to rearrange files by dragging-and-dropping virtual index cards on the corkboard, an outliner, a split screen mode that enables users to edit several documents at once, a full-screen mode, the ability to export text into multiple document formats (including popular e-book formats like EPUB and Mobipocket for Kindle, and markup languages such as Fountain, HTML, and MultiMarkdown), the ability to assign multiple keywords (and other metadata) to parts of a text and to sort the parts by keyword (such as characters, locations, themes, narrative lines, etc.), hyperlinks between parts of a text, and 'snapshots' (the ability to save a copy of a particular document prior to any drastic changes).

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