Plea for Help

Please do not mis-read my request here. It has been the same for years.   I am requesting that we retain the mobile functionality that has been available for YEARS.   I AM NOT requesting something new!
I AM NOT requesting an app!
  I am asking that with each new release and feature we do not loose access to mobile functionality that we have enjoyed for years.

 

I love World Anvil

  I love World Anvil — its creators, its team, and its community. I joined because I was a game master with dreams of something bigger. I’d tested and tried all the other tools, and nothing was even close.   Now, I’ll be the first to admit — I’m not a great writer. So a huge thank you to anyone who’s ever read one of my articles and even clicked “like.” You’re too kind. I’ve always seen myself as a gamer and game master first.   When I joined World Anvil, something strange happened: Summer Camp! Equal parts amazement and terror. The World Anvil community and the spirit of Summer Camp were inspiring and infectious. I still remember publishing my first article — equal parts excitement and fear. Since then, I’ve participated in every Summer Camp and World Ember up until 2025. This year marks the first I have not participated since joining World Anvil

Goals

  I’m writing this letter for several reasons. Mostly, I wanted to do it with a clear head because nothing written in anger ever turns out well. Text does not always carry tone, so please know I write this with respect and a tear in my eye.   To be clear, I don’t think any of this is malicious or intentional. Quite the opposite. I believe the road ahead for World Anvil is paved with purpose, good intentions, and a real desire to do better. The only reason I can offer feedback is because two amazing people — Dimi and Janet — built something incredible and grew a team from it. Without their work, my feedback wouldn’t even exist. And there has never been a better time for new world builders to join World Anvil, unless they have dreams of using their phone.   I’m sharing this because:

I don’t want to hold onto these thoughts and dwell on them.

Some people might feel the same but can’t or don’t want to speak up.

I hope it matters — because I still believe one person’s voice can make a difference.

  For context:

I work a minimum of 5 days a week, about 10 hours a day.

My commute is about 1 hour and 15 minutes round trip.

I also try to find time for sleep and the usual life stuff.

During all that time, my only access to World Anvil is on mobile. The time I find at my computer is precious.

  So yes — that’s my own situation. However I have had the great fortune of being able to use World Anvil very well for years on my phone.  

New Features

  I’m not upset about new features — I’m genuinely excited by them. However, I am discouraged that many of these improvements come at the cost of losing mobile functionality.   To borrow from Malcolm Reynolds in Serenity:  

“So me and mine gotta lay down and die… so you can live in your better world?”

— Malcolm Renolds

 

“So me and mine gotta give up our phones… so you can write in your better world?”

— Graylion

  That’s sometimes how it feels. Over the years, every time I hear “mobile support is coming in the future,” I want to shout. I don’t need new mobile development. I don’t need an app. I just need what I’ve already had for years.

Text Editors

 

Please do not miss this point.
I have wanted to switch from the Legacy editor for years.
I have wanted to switch to Euclid for years.
I wish that was still the worst of my frustrations.

  Let’s talk about the Legacy of Text editors. It’s a running joke that I still use it — and have for years — because it simply works best on mobile. It was the only editor when I joined, and when I heard it would eventually be retired, I asked (and maybe pleaded) that any replacement would include solid mobile functionality.   Every new editor that came out got me excited — I wanted to move forward. But every time, I had to switch back to Legacy because key features didn’t work properly on mobile. Usually, that was followed by “it’ll be fixed when we do a mobile pass.” That day just hasn’t come.   4 Editors - 6 Years
Over the years, we have received no less than 4 text editors and not one of them highlighted attention to mobile.

WYSIWYG 2019

Euclid 2020

Visual Editor 2024

Advanced Editor 2025

The blank text box

(more on that below)
  Text Editors - Per World - Per Article
When the text editor selection moved from account-level to world-level, I thought, “Great — more options for everyone!” I only later realized that it was the beginning of the end for Legacy.   No New Worlds
I still technically have access to Legacy in my worlds — in name only. When I go to create a new world, I only get two options (Advanced or Visual), so I’d have ten worlds running on Legacy and any new ones on a different system. That’s not a workable choice, so I’ve stopped creating new worlds.   Text Editors & Timelines
Even within my worlds, Legacy is in name only as certain features like Global Posts or Timelines are now controlled by newer editors, overriding my settings. When I reported this, I was told that timelines never had an editor, only a text box — that’s a distinction without a difference.   Some response from my mobile peers

“Oh, I handle timelines offsite now.”

Another has already left World Anvil.

That’s hard to see.   Bug Example

Euclid Editor on Mobile

6 or 7 rows of icons

Narrow width

Scrolling bug

I was told time and time again this did not exist

So I took a video

Not one single response after 5 months

Feedback on Feedback

  The onsite bug report system is a great feature — but ironically, it’s one of the least mobile-friendly areas of the platform. Trying to report mobile bugs from mobile is a real challenge.   The same goes for feedback forms. Before the new Athena rollout, there was apparently a feedback form within the help menu, but it wasn’t reachable on mobile. Now, the link on the new Athena dashboard also doesn’t function properly from a phone. It’s a small but frustrating irony.

Alchemists & Timelines

  During Alchemists testing of the Timelines feature, a lot of users (myself included) raised concerns that it made mobile use nearly impossible. It was a heated discussion, but thankfully, the List View feature was born from that feedback — and it’s fantastic.   Still, I’ve written and shared with World Anvil roughly 400 lines of CSS (and I am a CSS hack) just to make timelines usable on my phone, including editing them. Those fixes could have been smaller, simpler adjustments on the dev side. But I made do. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve just been too patient, too accommodating — maybe I should’ve spoken up louder. But being loud all the time wears you down.

Grab your Green Hammer and ...

 

The green hammer icon had been returned on mobile since the writing of this feedback. It was noted as a bug, and fixed quickly.

  The irony is I went to write this on my phone in the Deprecated Legacy Editor and my Green Hammer is gone. Yet is is still there on the desktop, when I looked after work.   This means a conscious choice to hide it on mobile. I have used that green hammer for years on mobile.  

Grab your phone and go world build.

 

One Summer Day

  I don’t remember the exact day, but it was a month or two before Summer Camp 2025 when I realized I needed to step back — from World Anvil and a few other things. I felt like my feedback wasn’t being taken seriously or was sometimes just seen as amusing.   To be fair, this wasn’t entirely a World Anvil issue. 2025 has been a challenging year — new home in 2024, my company being sold, new owners and life deciding to grapple for more attention. I am reminded that world building is both intellectual and emotional.   At one point, I was following around 700 worlds — and while only a core few were active, except for Summer Camp and World Ember. I unsubscribed from about 500–600 of them, keeping just those I actively engage with the users. I also left most Discord channels — keeping Inner Sanctum, the help space and a few others.   I turned off the Alchemist features and stepped away from development discussions.   If I wasn’t going to participate in Summer Camp, I didn’t want to sit in the constant flow of notifications and updates. It was a sad choice — but the right one. My intention was to just keep using World Anvil and hang in there for the day we could get some touchups on mobile. My plan was to checkup on the status of many mobile things a few months before Summer Camp 2026. Unfortunately, with the most recent release it is impossible to ignore.

Wrap-Up

  I’m here because I love what World Anvil stands for — creativity, community, and the courage to build worlds together. My hope is to remind, that many of us live our creative lives on small screens, in the cracks of busy days, writing between work shifts and commutes.   It still boggles my mind that the text editor with the longest history, the least number of bugs and the greatest mobile functionality reaches a dead-end and before the new and shiny editors can function well on mobile. Is it just because it will not be flashy? Would it have been that hard to just let it continue until or if a mobile pass could be implemented on the other two text editors. However I have come to realize the text editor is not longer my biggest problem.   I look forward to hearing. “Grab your phone and go World Build”.   Thank you, truly, for everything you’ve built and shared with us — and for listening.