Scriptation can automatically highlight your characters' names and dialogue so characters can be tracked throughout the script. From the Top Toolbar, select Highlight:

The Auto-Highlight sidebar will come onscreen and with the color picker in each row you can choose which characters you want to color. When you pick a character's color, their highlighting is automatically toggled on and will be visible on the script page. If you want to hide a character's highlighting, just toggle it off. With an Industry Pro account, you can also choose to auto-highlight Scene Headings and / or Action lines.

Turn Highlight On or Off for All Characters

To assign colors to all of the characters at once and display them on the script page, touch or click the 3-dot menu at the upper right and choose All On. To remove all character highlights from the script, choose All Off:

Presets and Saved Colors

All On

This command simply matches, in order, a color on the Color Presets list to its counterpart on the character list. The first color on the Presets List is assigned to the first character on the list, the fifth color to the fifth character, and so on down the line. Note that the character list is sorted by the total amount of dialogue per character (the character with the most is at the top and the one with the least is at the bottom).

Individual Highlighting

If no characters have been highlighted yet, the first time you toggle on any character's highlighting and no matter where that character is on the list, the first color on the Presets List will be assigned. When the next character's highlighting is switched on, wherever that name is on the list, the second color on the list will be used, and so on.

The presets can be edited so the colors are in an order more suitable to your workflow. For example, if in every script you always want the first character to be blue and the fifth character to be red, you can customize the presets that way.

Presets

To edit the color presets, touch or click the 3-dot menu at the upper right of the sidebar and choose Color Presets:
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Touch or click a colored dot to change that preset's color. The three tabs at the top of this window are for a color grid, a color wheel and RGB / HSB / White sliders:

To reset the color presets to default, touch or click the 3-dot menu at the upper right and choose Reset:
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Saving Characters' Assigned Colors

Once you have your characters set with the right colors, you can save the scheme by touching or clicking the Save icon at the upper left of the sidebar:

Touch or click OK at the upper right to save these color assignments.

Moving forward, any character who's been assigned a color will, even in other scripts, be associated with that color. This is especially useful for productions with recurring characters (like Daniella and Rob):

Removing a Color Preset

To remove a color assignment from a character, select the 3-dot menu at the upper right and touch or click Delete:

Touch or click the red circle to the left of the character and then the red square to confirm the deletion. Touch or click OK to return to the previous sidebar:

Choosing What's Highlighted

Options to highlight the both the character name and the dialogue, just the dialogue or just the character name are at the bottom of the sidebar (requires Industry Pro).

What's Next

Auto-Highlighting isn't working right. What's wrong?
What is Reader Mode?
Can I transfer my Auto-Highlights?

Updated on: 26/02/2025