prev noted that this is nice but not free anymore, and they’re right. but the good news is that you have other, more recent, still free options!
none of these have sound embedded in them, but i feel like everyone knows how to search youtube for ‘deep focus music’ or 'crab rave ten hours’ or whatever it is that you personally need. if you want nature sounds or audio landscapes, you probably already know about mynoise, and if you didn’t before, now you do.
there are a ton of apps that offer this kind of thing if you search for something like 'text editor focus mode’, but these are three that i actually use and like.
my favourite is obsidian used in conjunction with the prozen plugin (found in the community plugins directory). if you look around, there are people getting deeply weird (kinda complimentary, kinda not) with obsidian. i’m not one of those people, and basically use it for text editing, the end.
regular view | focus view:
obsidian has apps for linux, mac, windows (including a community-supported portable app), android, and ios. if you want to sync between devices, you can self-host sync or pay a nominal fee per year for it. this is my mvp and you will pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
next up is ellipsus. if you love writing in a browser, this is your solution. if you hate writing in a browser, this is not your solution. it’s possible to use ellipsus for collaborative work—as before, i have not done this, and have just used it as a text editor.
regular view | focus view:
(if you full-screen the browser, focus mode gets a little more focused, since the toolbars disappear, but i went with the default 'what hitting focus mode does’ option.)
ellipsus has a plus option that adds more customisation (themes, etc), as well as a collaborative chat and some other stuff, but the core features are free. (i have a free account.)
finally, a weird dark horse contender, focuswriter. in many regards, it’s probably closest to what zenwriter was. focuswriter is a text editor. that’s it. there’s no graph view or collaborative features or anything else. you use it to edit text. the end. i have used this software for exactly its intended purpose.
regular view (which is also focus view!) | hovering so the toolbar is displayed
focuswriter works on linux and windows (including portable), and maybe mac? i’m gonna be real: the github has a comment about using the portable (.exe) on linux and mac, but this is fully outside my wheelhouse. i’m not a mac girlie, and if i need windows stuff on linux i just use wine like a normal person. sorry, mac users. i’m moving on.
i think the big downside to focuswriter is that it doesn’t have an autosave feature. if you’re old and compulsively ctrl-s, this probably matters less. if you know that you will never in a million years manage to remember to save things while you’re working on them, give this a pass, but if you want the most straightforward option possible and don’t mind the lack of autosave, this might be your best solution.
honourable mentions for this type of thing go to scrivener (steep learning curve, decidedly not free) in focus mode and notepad++ (free, literally no learning curve, actually my non-obsidian editor of choice) in distraction free mode, but honestly, those are both purpose-specific enough that i sort of assume that if they’re appropriate to your use case, you already know about them. however, if you love plaintext files, autosave, and a minimally styled no-distractions mode, it’s maybe worth looking into notepad++ as a text editor, even if you’re not its target audienced
