Somewhere Else to Write the Book.
Focus mode takes Shiro full screen and leaves your page and nothing else, set in a place you chose. Those places are called nooks: a pond with a heron, a Monet that never quite dried, a night drive where your words are the distance. Cmd+Shift+F goes in, Esc comes out, and if you’d rather have none of it there’s a plain page.
Going In
The window fills the screen and the page floats on glass in front of whichever place you’re in. Drag it where you want it and pull a corner to resize it. The heron stands on the right of its pond, so the page leans left to give it room.
You get 13 bundled fonts, a tint for the glass, and a veil that softens the backdrop behind your words. Typewriter scrolling keeps your line in the middle of the screen, and the other paragraphs can dim. A sprint timer is one click away, and its words count toward your day.
On the way out, Shiro tells you how many words you wrote and in how many minutes, including, where it applies, “No new words”.
The Nooks
The Heron. A grey heron at the edge of a pond, in seven scenes from first light to evening. Rain makes rings on the water, a lotus opens over the hour, and at night the bird sleeps among the fireflies. It’s the ideal colleague: it stands still for hours, says nothing, and now and then gets something done.
Monet. Seven paintings, from the museums’ own open-access files and in the public domain, gently alive: the water trembles, the mist breathes, the grass moves. Satie and Debussy on piano. Monet painted those wheat stacks in about every light there is, which is worth remembering on your fourth go at the opening.
Mist. Snow, ridges and still water, half lost in fog. Almost nothing moves. For anyone who finds the heron busy.
Synthwave. A night drive toward one of seven destinations. Your words are the distance and your goal is a city up ahead. The speed follows your typing and the dashboard shows your words per minute, so stopping to think feels very much like running out of petrol.
Hacker. A night at the terminal, six screens that answer your keystrokes, live synth music. For writing a cosy mystery as though you were breaking into a bank.
After hours. Lofi on the night tram, seven stops in a pixel town: a laundromat, a noodle stand, a bookshop. The town lights up as you write.
My space. Your own picture, looping video or animated page, with Shiro’s sounds or your own music. The photo of that cabin you keep not renting would do nicely.
The plain page. No backdrop, no sound, and no hard feelings.
What Your Keyboard Sounds Like
Each nook comes with a key sound, and you can swap it for any other: typewriter, mechanical, laptop, wood, brush, water drops, felt, or none. Tuned to the music plays a note that fits the music, walking through the chords as they change, so your worst sentence of the week will at least be in D major.
The letters can do something too. Ink settles into the page, letters rise, phosphor glows, or a dab of paint lands with each key. You can put a typewriter in the Monet if that’s who you are. Water, wind, rain and night sit on their own level, separate from the music, and a single control hushes the lot when the scene gets hard.
Is This Not a Distraction?
It can be. An hour spent auditioning backdrops is an hour spent not writing, and we’ve done it too. The chooser previews each nook behind the page as you point at it, which is a good way to find one and an excellent way to lose an afternoon.
The idea is modest. A book takes long enough that going back to the same room can help you get started, the way a certain chair or a certain café does. If it helps, stay. If it doesn’t, the plain page is one click away, and Write works exactly the same without any of it. What you type in a nook goes to the same files as everything else.
The Questions People Ask
How do I open Focus mode?
Cmd+Shift+F on a Mac, Ctrl+Shift+F on Windows and Linux. Esc leaves it.
Can I turn off the backdrop and the sound?
Yes. The plain page has no backdrop and no sound. In any nook you can also change the key sound, turn the music down or silence everything.
Can I use my own picture and music?
Yes. My space takes your own picture, looping video or animated page, and your music as WAV, MP3, OGG or FLAC. They stay on your device.
Does it work offline?
Mostly. Some music downloads the first time it plays, and after that it’s yours. Some nooks have music the app plays itself, and those download nothing.