Glacier
Glacier

Plan and write your story
in one file.

A woven tree of scenes, a board of cards, and a page to write on. The plan and the prose live in the same file, so your outline can’t quietly drift away from the draft while you’re not looking.

Get started See what it does

Your story is a file on your own drive. We never see a word of it.

What Glacier is

A writing studio, not a word processor.

You know the choice. Outliners that can’t hold prose, word processors that can’t hold a shape, so you end up running both and by draft three they disagree with each other. Glacier is one file that does both jobs.

Build a tree of scenes, give each one a job, then write straight into it. The structure stays on screen while you draft, so you always know where you are and what this scene is supposed to be doing.
Structure

Scenes with a job

Every scene carries what it’s for, not only what happens in it. Parts, chapters and acts come out of the shape you build instead of being imposed on it.

Craft

Setups and payoffs

Link a setup to the scene that pays it off. Nothing you planted in chapter two quietly vanishes by draft four.

People

Characters and reference

Profiles and reference pages sit beside the draft: what each person wants, and what they believe about themselves that isn’t quite true.

How it works

Three ways to see the same story.

Nothing’s duplicated between them. Same scenes, different angle, depending on what you’re trying to work out this morning.

Write

Binder, page, inspector

Three columns: your scenes on the left, the page in the middle, everything about the scene on the right. Saves as you type, counts as you go, and folds down to the page alone when the rest is in the way.

Tree

See the shape

The whole story as a woven map. Every scene drawn in place, the through-line coloured, so the shape of the thing is right there in front of you.

Board

Move it around

The same story as a wall of cards, the way a writers’ room works. An Ideas column parks the scenes you’ve thought of but haven’t committed to yet.

Glacier's Tree view: eight scenes across two parts, drawn as a woven map, each scene coloured by which characters know the secret.
The Tree. Every scene in place, coloured by whatever your story actually turns on. Here it’s who knows what happened in 1953.
Glacier's Write view: the binder of scenes on the left, the prose page in the middle, and on the right an inspector holding the scene's synopsis, part, thread, word target, setups and payoffs, characters and notes.
Write. Binder, page, inspector. The plan sits beside the prose instead of on top of it, so the first line of the draft is the first thing on the page. Drag the columns to the widths you want; put either side pane away when you don’t.

Six formats, one tool

Prose, screenplay, TV drama, TV sitcom, comic and radio. Picking one changes the rules Glacier applies: a comic counts pages and panels instead of words, and a screenplay knows a slugline from a transition. The tree, the board and the craft tools stay the same throughout.

Your files

Your story is a file. On your drive.

Not a row in our database, and not a folder in an account you have to keep paying for. One file. Copy it, email it, drop it in whatever cloud drive you already trust.

We never store your writing

The server keeps your email address and whether your licence is active. That’s the lot. Your manuscript never reaches it, so there’s nothing of yours for us to leak or hold hostage.

It keeps working offline

Your licence is checked on your own machine, so a dead connection doesn’t stop you writing. Ours or yours. Sign in again every so often and that’s the whole of it.

Backups and exports you control

Back up, auto-backup and export to text are all built in. Since we’re not keeping a copy for you, keeping one is your job, so the tools for it are right there.

No lock-in

Export the manuscript as plain text whenever you like. If you ever walk away from Glacier, you walk away with the thing you came here to write.

In your browser

There is nothing to install.

Glacier is a web app and only a web app. You open a tab and you are writing. No download, no updater, no version to keep straight across two machines — sign in on the other one and your licence follows you.

Any browser

Open a tab and start

Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, Brave, Arc, on whatever you already use. The whole studio is one page — the tree, the board, the editor and your manuscript, with nothing to set up first.

Chromium

Straight onto your drive

In Chrome, Edge, Brave or Arc on a computer, Glacier writes into a file on your drive as you type — that file is the save. Elsewhere the work is kept safely in the browser and Back up hands you a copy you own.

Any screen

Laptop, tablet, phone

The same page and the same file. On a tablet or phone the layout folds down to the page you are writing on. Pin it to your dock or home screen and the browser chrome disappears — it is still the web app, just without the tabs.

Pricing

Pay once. That’s it.

One price for the whole thing, paid once. No subscription, no tiers, no features held back for a version you haven’t bought. Updates come as they come, and you don’t pay again for them.

Prices in pounds sterling, and that’s the total: there’s no UK VAT to add. Buying from outside the UK, your own country’s sales tax may be added at checkout, and you’ll see it before you pay. Terms · Privacy

Get access

How you launch Glacier.

There’s no password to forget. Sign in with Google, Apple, Microsoft or GitHub, or have a one-time link sent to your email. After that the licence lives in this browser and you’re done thinking about it.

  1. Pick how to sign in. Google, Apple, Microsoft or GitHub, or your email and we send a one-time link. No password either way.
  2. Confirm it. One tap with a provider, or open the link we email you. Either way you’re signed in on this device.
  3. Buy Glacier, if you haven’t already. One price, paid once. Stripe handles the checkout; your card never comes near us.
  4. Write. Glacier opens, and a licence is tucked away on your machine so it keeps working offline and tops itself up when you next go online.

Already bought it? Sign in on this device and Glacier opens straight away.

Sign in or create your account

One email address, one link. That’s the whole account.

or your email

Questions

Do I need an internet connection to write?

No. Your licence is checked on your own machine, so once you’re set up you can write with no connection at all. Glacier tops it up quietly whenever you next happen to be online.

Where is my work stored?

On your drive, as a file you control. Our server keeps your email address and whether your licence is active, and nothing else. Your manuscript never reaches it.

Which browsers does it work in?

All the current ones. In Chrome, Edge, Brave and Arc on a computer, Glacier writes straight into a file on your drive as you type. Safari, Firefox and every browser on a phone or tablet can’t do that — nothing to do with us, the feature simply isn’t there — so they keep the work safely in the browser and you take a copy with Back up. Everything else behaves the same everywhere.

Is it a subscription?

No. You pay once and you keep it, and updates are included for as long as we sell and support it. A future major version might one day be a separate purchase. If that happens, the version you own stays yours and carries on working.

What about refunds?

Fourteen days, no reason needed, and you keep that right even after you’ve started using Glacier. The law would let us ask you to sign it away in exchange for instant access. We don’t. Email us and the money goes back the way it came. After the fourteen days, a fault or anything not as described is still ours to put right. The terms spell it out.