What can I do if I updated to macOS 10.15 Catalina?

HOW CAN I CONTINUE TO WORK WITH SCREENWRITER / DRAMATICA IF MY MACHINE GOT UPGRADED TO 10.15 CATLINA?

There will always be some clients that accidentally upgraded to a new and incompatible operating system.  Here's some strategies for working in the meantime (until we announce our free updates for Catalina).   We present these in the order of highest performance and least hassle (however, see #5):

1. Revert ("DOWNGRADE") your computer's version of MacOS back to Mojave; See this article.  Really, it's not that hard and it's the highest quality solution until our updates are ready.  The process can even be handled at the Apple Store's Genius bar, but make sure you've done a FULL Time Machine backup FIRST, and bring that backup with you to the store.
   
   
2. PARTITION CONTAINING MOJAVE.  Set up a separate (small, like 80GB or larger) partition on your computer, and install MacOS Mojave on that partition.  That will let you can boot optionally boot into MacOS 10.14 Mojave in thirty seconds.  To switch back-and-forth between 10.14 Mojave and 10.15 Catalina you restart by holding down the OPTION key.  You will be able to easily copy files BETWEEN the two partitions.  WE ARE WORKING ON STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS TO HELP YOU WITH THIS.
   
   
3. EXTERNAL DRIVE CONTAINING MOJAVE.  Same as #2, but using a small, fast, inexpensive external SSD (solid state drive) instead of partitioning your internal drive.  Better for people that are already tight on hard disk space.
   
   
4. INSTALL / RUN SCREENWRITER ON ANOTHER MACHINE: IF you have another Mac that has MacOS 10.10 through 10.14, you can use one of your three installs to run on that machine.
   
   
5. NEW:  RUN MOJAVE ON CATALINA IN A FREE VIRTUAL MACHINE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD.  A "Virtual Machine" is software that allows you to run an entirely separate version of MacOS Mojave in its own window ON 10.15 Catalina!  The performance is excellent!
   
   We have created a pre-installed Screenwriter 6.5 and Dramatica 5.3.1 on a downloadable virtual machine that will run on the free Oracle VirtualBox.  Our initial tests have shown this is a high-performance temporary solution until we release our Catalina-compatible update.  
   
   We have packaged up the installable virtual machine in a (large) downloadable file.  Here's the instructions if you would like to give this a try:
   
   https://techsupport.screenplay.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034975752
   
   NOTE: The above link is a free, high performance solution that ANY Mac user can easily set up.   Tech-Savvy expert users may prefer to set up their own virtual machines using one of the commercially available virtual machines, such as Parallels Desktop for Mac, or VMWare Fusion Pro.
   
   
6. FDX COMPATIBILITY.  Temporarily write in a program that supports Final Draft .fdx file format.  Since Screenwriter 6.5 can import / export .fdx file format, you can temporarily write in another program and bring that work back to Screenwriter.  NOTE: we don't recommend this for scripts in-production, due to incompatibilities between the way Screenwriter and Final Draft handle locked production scripts.

PLEASE DON'T OPEN A SUPPORT TICKET ASKING FOR THE ESTIMATED RELEASE DATE.  We will send email to our entire registered user base as soon as we're ready to begin testing.  Just bookmark this (or other Catalina FAQs to check on beta announcements.