Truly Simple Timeline
A Simple Timeline Builder
Screenshots
About the App
Truly Simple Timeline was built by a professional author to help keep track of narrative arcs, story beats, and which characters participate scenes across the span of a novel.
It’s customizable to make it useful for all sorts of purposes, though, and its visual, drag-and-drop interface and cross-device functionality makes blocking-out events across centuries or the hours in a single day (and then adjusting those events later, as things progress) easy.
There’s an in-app purchase that allows for an unlimited number of timelines, but all other features are available in free version.
Features
- Intuitive drag-and-drop interface
- Large-scale arc events (for delineating acts or other macro-scale periods), single-date events, and duration events with beginning and end dates
- Add events one at a time, or add batches of them all at once
- Timelines sync between devices (between your Mac and iPhone, for instance)
- Vertical and horizontal modes on both iOS and MacOS
- All features available for free (paid "pro" version unlocks ability to have more than one timeline going at once)
Tips & More Info
Play around with the display settings to get things looking the way you’d prefer (showing or not-showing various data on the event bubbles can make timelines more intuitive, depending on how you’re using them).
Some features that are useful when you’re initially building your timeline (like tapping/clicking the timeline to add an event where you tapped/clicked, or dragging the event bubbles to new locations) will become annoying after you’ve got the basics set up, so periodically check your settings options and toggle things on or off as warranted.
I built this app because I’m in the middle of editing a new novel (the first of an intended trilogy) and remembering all the dates was becoming a real task, and while there are some other solid timeline options out there (Aeon Timeline is really powerful if you learn how to use it), most of them either had too many or not enough features, didn’t look great (to my eyes), or were too expensive.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is the app free?
- Yes, the app is completely free to download and use, but there's a "paywall" for one feature: the ability to make more than one timeline at once. If you'd like to unlock that feature (to have unlimited timelines going simultaneously) or just want to support further development of the app (and my work in general) it's a $4.99 in-app purchase.
- What platforms are supported?
- Currently, the app is available for iOS 17.0 or later and macOS 14.0 or later (I'll continue to make these apps as back-compatible as possible, but some of the visual elements in particular are fairly reliant on capabilities offered by modern versions of iOS and MacOS).
- How do I report a bug or request a feature?
- Reach out via one of the options on the contact page.
Privacy Policy
The app does not collect any personal data and contains no tracking.