Show HN: Drift – a featherlight, distraction-free writing tool

Hey everyone. I’ve been working on this for a little while as a fun personal project. It’s a minimalist writing app that mostly just leaves me alone. There is no text formatting, spellchecking, or markdown-ing. Just a bare-bones, decently solid writing surface.

There are a few features I’ve added over time that I thought were useful. There’s a small word counter, an auto-hiding nav, and a focus mode, which highlights the block of text you’re on and fades out the rest. I use it a lot for first drafts of things, which I like to print out and make edits to by hand, so I’ve set it up to be print-friendly with large line heights and roomy margins.

My initial focus was to create something first-draft-friendly. I have the type of brain that’s easily derailed by little distractions like red squiggles and pausing to format things. It’s very easy for me to lose my train of thought and creative flow, and I find I write best when I’m able to just get the words out. So I did my best to leave as much on the cutting room floor as I could.

I hope you’ll find this helpful too. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.