Text effects
Text effects make individual letters move or change color: a shaking scream, a wavy dream, a rainbow word. You choose which letters get an effect, and you can stack several effects on the same letters.
Where you can use them
- Text actions: the message, and the speaker name when you choose Other.
- Character names, in the Characters tab. The effect shows wherever that character speaks.
- Choice texts.
- Request input prompts.
- Credits: names and roles.
Add an effect
- Type your text, then highlight the letters you want to change.
- In the menu that appears next to Copy and Paste, tap Text effects. On a computer, right-click the highlighted text.
- A sheet opens with a preview of the highlighted text and a switch for each effect. Turn on the effects you want. Each one shows its settings when it's on, and the preview updates as you change them.
- Tap Apply.
There's no Text effects button on the screen: the option only appears in that selection menu, once some letters are highlighted. The app tour points this out too.
The letters with effects are highlighted in the text field so you can see where they are.
The effects
| Effect | What it does | Settings |
|---|---|---|
| Color | Letters take one color | Pick from the swatches or tap the wheel for any color |
| Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough | Styles the letters | None |
| Shake | Letters jitter in place | Intensity, Speed |
| Wave | Letters rise and fall in a wave | Intensity, Speed, Wave length |
| Bounce | Letters hop up one after another | Intensity, Speed |
| Rainbow | Letters cycle through colors | Speed, Spread, Colors (2 to 6) |
| Glitch | Letters jump and split into colored copies now and then | Intensity, Speed, How often, Colors |
| Pulse | Letters grow and shrink | Intensity, Speed, Fade (also fades in and out) |
| Scramble | Letters keep turning into random letters, like a hidden message | Speed |
For Rainbow and Glitch, tap one of the ready-made palettes or build your own: the bar shows the gradient, tap a color circle to change it, × removes it and + adds one.
Change or remove effects
Highlight the letters again and tap Text effects. The sheet shows the effects already on them, with their current settings:
- Change a setting and tap Apply to update it.
- Turn an effect off and tap Apply to remove it from the highlighted letters.
- Tap RESET to remove every effect from the highlighted letters. Letters outside your highlight keep theirs.
An effect that covers only part of your highlight says On part of the selection. Leaving it off doesn't remove it; turning it on applies it to all the highlighted letters.
When effects overlap
- Each effect only once per letter. If you add Wave to letters that overlap an existing Wave, they join into one wave section rather than two.
- Different effects stack. If you add Rainbow to letters that overlap a Wave, the overlapping letters get both, and the rest of the Wave stays as it was.
Effects stay attached to their letters while you edit the text around them. A text variable inside an effect shows its value with that effect.
In the player
Effects play in the Kohana app, the Web Player and exported novels. The typing animation still types the letters out one by one.
If a reader has reduce motion turned on in their device settings, letters keep their color changes but don't move.
Readers on an older version of the Kohana app see the text without effects.
Tips
- Use effects for emphasis. A few moving words stand out; a whole moving paragraph is hard to read.
- Keep Shake and Glitch Intensity low for long lines.
- Effects carry over to translations, and translators can move them. See Translations.
Related
Text action · Characters · Translations
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