How to open an .fdx file for free
An .fdx file is a screenplay saved in Final Draft's format. Cold Open, a free and open-source screenwriting app, opens it, lets you edit and print it, and saves it back as .fdx, on Windows, macOS and Linux.
In three steps
- Download Cold Open for your computer and install it. It's free, with no account.
- Open Cold Open, then Open (Ctrl+O, or Cmd+O on a Mac) and choose the .fdx file. On Windows and Linux you can also open it from your file manager with Open with ▸ Cold Open.
- Read it, edit it, or export a PDF. Save writes it back as .fdx, for whoever sent it.
What comes through
- The script: every scene heading, action, character, parenthetical, dialogue, transition and shot, and dual dialogue.
- The title page.
- Everything else in the file that Cold Open doesn't use is kept as it was and written back, so saving doesn't strip what another program put there.
Some extras can't be written into .fdx by Cold Open yet: its notes, sections and synopses, and tracked changes, which are written accepted. Cold Open asks before such a save, and offers a Cold Open project, which keeps everything. See .fdx exchange.
A damaged .fdx file
When an .fdx file is broken, Cold Open recovers what it can, opens the script, and shows a short report of what it repaired. The original file is kept. From a terminal, coldopen repair broken.fdx repaired.fdx does the same without opening the app.
Print it, or turn it into a PDF
Export a PDF (Ctrl+Shift+E, or Cmd+Shift+E) lays the script out in standard screenplay format, the same way on every computer. From a terminal: coldopen export script.fdx script.pdf.
Other formats
Cold Open also reads and writes Fountain, a plain-text screenplay format. Save a copy as Fountain gives you a version of the script any text editor can open.