Mark up the script. Leave the paper.

Every actor has done the print run. Sides land at 11pm, you find somewhere to print them, you highlight your lines with a marker, and by the time you have them the revised pages arrive and you do it again. Three drafts of the same scene in your bag, and the one with your best note in the margin is the one you left at home.

The document was always a PDF. The printing was the workaround.

Open it exactly as it arrived

Tap Read & Annotate and your sides open full-screen, as they were sent. Casting's marks, the watermark, the scene headings, the page numbers. Pinch to zoom, swipe to turn the page. Nothing is retyped and nothing is reflowed, so when someone in the room says "top of four" you are looking at the same page they are.

There is no save button. Everything you do to the page saves itself.

Your lines, lit up in one tap

This is the part that used to take a highlighter and twenty minutes. Pick your character and every line they speak turns yellow, right through the script, not just the page you are on. Change your mind and pick someone else. Clear it entirely with No highlight.

Subtext remembers the choice for that script, so it is still there when you come back to it the night before.

If your sides came in as a photograph of a page rather than real text, there are no lines to find and Subtext tells you so rather than pretending. You mark that one up by hand.

Pens and highlighters, for the things a highlighter cannot say

Lighting up your lines tells you where to speak. It does not tell you what you decided. That is what the drawing tools are for: black, red and blue pens for a fine line in the margin, and yellow, green, blue and pink highlighters that are broad and see-through, so going over the same words twice does not turn them muddy.

Circle the turn. Underline the word the whole speech hangs on. Slash the beat change. The eraser lifts a whole mark at a tap and leaves your notes and your character highlight alone, and undo walks back through the page one mark at a time.

A finger draws and two fingers swipe the page along. Touch an Apple Pencil to the screen and drawing is handed to the Pencil for the rest of the session, which puts page turns back on a single finger where they belong.

Notes that stay where the note belongs

A margin note is only useful next to the line it is about. Tap the page wherever the note belongs, type it, and a small amber dot marks the spot. Tap the dot any time to open it, edit it or delete it.

Drop as many as you like, on any page. Each one stays pinned to its exact spot however far you zoom in, which is more than the margin ever managed.

Book tabs for the pages you keep flicking back to

Tab a page and Subtext names the tab after the scene heading it finds there, or the page number if there is not one. Tap a tab to jump straight to it. Press and hold to rename it something you will actually look for, like the fight, or my monologue, or recolor it so the shape of the script is readable at a glance.

On an iPad the tabs sit out on the right where you can read them. On an iPhone they tuck into a thin stripe of color down the edge, and tapping fans them out.

Stage Mode: when it needs to stop being a tablet

Paper has one real advantage. It does not do anything you did not ask it to. Hold an iPad through a run and stray hand contact swipes you two pages on, or the screen rotates because of how you are holding it, and you have lost your place in front of the director.

Stage Mode is the fix. It freezes the page, hides every piece of interface, and leaves you the script. Pages turn only from the thumb corners, left or right, so it works in either hand: single tap forward, double-tap back. On an iPad it pins the screen to portrait so it cannot rotate on you.

A thin blue shimmer around the edge is the only thing on screen that is not the script. It is there so you know the lock is on.

Then run the scene

Marking up the script is where the thinking gets recorded. It is not where it gets tested. The same Rehearse button that opens Stage Mode also starts a run with a scene partner: every other part read out loud, performed, listening while you say yours, with your lines hiding a word at a time until they are yours. That is running lines out loud.

And if you want to know what you are marking up before you mark it, Subtext will tell you what the scene is about, who you are to everyone in it, and what happened before the page starts. That is script analysis, in the same app.

Step by step, with every button named: how to mark up your script in the guide.

Questions actors ask

Can I use my iPad as my script instead of printing it?

Yes. The PDF opens full-screen exactly as it was sent to you, and you highlight, draw, tab and annotate on the page itself. Nothing is retyped or reformatted, so what you rehearse from is the same document everyone else in the room is holding.

Can it highlight all of my character's lines at once?

Yes, in one tap. Pick a character and every line they speak turns yellow right through the script, not just on the page you are looking at. Subtext remembers the choice for that script, and you clear it by choosing No highlight.

Does it work with an Apple Pencil?

Yes. A finger draws and two fingers swipe the page along. The moment an Apple Pencil touches the screen, drawing is handed to the Pencil for the rest of the session, so a single finger goes back to turning pages the way it should.

What is Stage Mode?

Stage Mode is a reading lock for the rehearsal room, on set or on stage. It freezes the page against stray hand contact, hides every piece of interface, and turns pages only from the thumb corners: a single tap goes forward and a double-tap goes back. On an iPad it also pins the screen to portrait so it cannot rotate in your hands.

Do my marks sync between my iPhone and my iPad?

Pens and highlighters are saved into the PDF itself, and notes and tabs are saved alongside it. With a membership they follow you between your own devices through iCloud, so the copy you marked up on the sofa is the copy in your hand at the audition.