Articles on: Annotations

Why are my Auto-Highlights different across devices?

If the same character's highlights look different on your iPad, iPhone, or Mac, the cause is almost always Auto-Highlight. Auto-Highlight applies color per-device from each device's configuration — so if your iPad and Mac have different color setups, the same lines will appear in different colors on each device.

📝 NOTE: This applies to Auto-Highlight only. Regular Highlight, Underline, Squiggle, and Strikethrough annotations store the color you picked inside the annotation itself — those carry across devices with the file.

Auto-Highlight uses two color mechanisms — both are per-device

Auto-Highlight color is governed by two separate settings, and neither one syncs between devices:

Color Presets — the order of colors Auto-Highlight cycles through when assigning colors to characters it hasn't seen before. If your iPad starts with yellow and your Mac starts with green, the very first character Auto-Highlight tags on each device will look different.
Saved Colors — a specific color pinned to a specific character's name on that device. If you've Saved Andy = blue on iPad but Andy hasn't been Saved on Mac, Mac will fall back to whatever color the Color Preset order assigns to Andy.

To make Auto-Highlight match across devices, you need to set up both on every device.

📝 NOTE: Customizing Color Presets and Saved Colors requires Industry Pro.

How to match your Auto-Highlight setup across devices

On the device where Auto-Highlight is set up the way you like, open the Auto-Highlight customization and write down:

The Color Preset order (the sequence of colors);
Each Saved Color — the character name and the HEX code of its assigned color.See How do I customize Auto-Highlight colors? for the customization screen.

On your other device, open the same Auto-Highlight customization and:

Set the Color Preset order to match;
Add each Saved Color with the same character name and HEX code.

Re-open your script — Auto-Highlight will now render in matching colors.

✅ TIP: A quick way to keep the HEX codes handy is to type them into a Text Box on a page of your script (for example, on a cast list page). If stored in a Cloud Connection, the Text Box syncs with the file across devices, so you always have your codes available wherever you're setting up Auto-Highlight.

Display color profiles can also play a role

Even with identical HEX codes, the same color can look slightly different on different screens. iPhone, iPad, and Mac displays each have their own color profile, brightness, and True Tone settings.

If your colors look close but not identical across devices, this is almost always why — and it's not something Scriptation can override. Try comparing two devices side-by-side with True Tone and Night Shift turned off to isolate how much of the difference is the display itself.

Still seeing a mismatch?

If your Color Presets and Saved Colors match across devices and the difference is still bigger than a display color shift, use the Send us an email button at the bottom of this page.

What's Next

What is Auto-Highlight?
How do I customize Auto-Highlight colors?
Auto-Highlighting isn't working right. What's wrong?
How do I use the Text Marking tools?

Updated on: 25/06/2026

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