FocusWriter is a simple, distraction-free word processor. It uses a hide-away interface that you access by moving your mouse to the edges of the screen, allowing the program to have a familiar look and feel to it while still getting out of the way so that you can immerse yourself in your work. Improve your writing productivity.
FocusWriter allows you to customize your environment by creating themes that control the font, colors, and background image to add ambiance. It also has on-the-fly updating statistics, daily goals, multiple open documents, spell-checking, and much more.
When you open the program your current work in progress will automatically load and position you where you last left off so that you can immediately jump back in.
Key Features
- Timers and alarms.
- Session management.
- Daily goals.
- Fully customizable themes.
- Auto-save (optional).
- Live statistics (optional). Statistics include word count, page count, paragraph count, and character count.
- Spell-checking (optional) for supported languages, on-the-fly, or performed in the background.
- Multi-document support.
- Sessions.
- Portable mode (optional).
- Scene list sidebar.
- Keyboard shortcuts.
- TXT, basic RTF, and basic ODT file support.
- Basic support for Office Open XML files.
- Typewriter sound effects (optional).
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems that support Java.
- Translated into over 20 languages including Armenian, Lithuanian, Czech, Dutch, Greek, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, and Chinese.
Website: gottcode.org/focuswriter
Support: Blog
Developer: Graeme Gott
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

FocusWriter is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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Good for short simple work, but useless for even a novella with three characters, unless the writer has a photographic memory. I’ll stick with Manuskript.