Syncing is addressed in a clever way, that, technically, isn’t syncing at all but rather sharing. You can also go a few steps further and customize the background, font, and scroller color in case you don’t dig the default color scheme of white type on a black background.
WriteRoom allows you to create documents using any of the iPhone’s built-in fonts (including Marker Felt, which is what the Notes app uses) and with fonts of any number of sizes. (I pasted a 40,000-word treatise into a WriteRoom document and it still scrolled smoothly).ĭoes WriteRoom address the commonly lamented facets of Notes-namely, no control over fonts and no way of syncing documents with your Mac? Yes, it does. Text entry is fast, and the application remains responsive with a very large amount of text in one document. When you’re planning on writing a longer document, tilt your iPhone into landscape mode to use a larger keyboard.
To start a new document, just tap the plus sign in the upper right corner and start writing. When you launch WriteRoom, you’re presented with a list of all the documents you’ve written. Unlike with Mac programs, though, every iPhone app is presented in ‘fullscreen mode,’ so WriteRoom for the iPhone can’t rest on its big brother’s big feature to stand out in the crowded iPhone text-editing field. WriteRoom for the Mac ( is famous for having a fullscreen interface which minimizes distractions and helps you focus on writing.
You might be familiar with the mobile app’s big sibling, the Mac text editor by Hog Bay Software which shares the same name. WriteRoom for the iPhone and iPod touch can save that idea (and perhaps, by extension, the world). Sighing heavily, you resign yet another world-changing idea to the possibility of remaining trapped within the echoing corridors of your mind. You turn to your iPhone, but you just can’t bring yourself to use the included Notes app because of its lack of customizability and syncing. You frantically search around you for a slip of paper to jot it down, but you can’t find anything. It also works seamlessly with multiple monitors, with each one able to edit a different file in a similar fashion.I’m sure you’ve been in a store and had the idea of a lifetime. Unlike multi pane editing, the objective here isn't to fit as much information as possible on the screen, but to block out everything that you don't need right now. Note the lack of menu, status bar, toolbar, line numbers, rulers etc.
You can think of it as WriteRoom for Windows, with regular expressions, Python plugins and code editing. In this setup, there's nothing at all on the screen but your text in the center, and a muted scrollbar on the right. Prompted by a suggestion on the forums, the current beta supports this very style. If, like Mark Pilgrim, all this makes you wonder why someone would want a text editor with no features, then I do suggest giving one of them a try, it's a pleasant experience. These are all great for editing prose, but none support editing LaTeX, let alone code. Other options are PyRoom, JDarkRoom and Vroom. So what options do you have? If you're on a Mac, you can use WriteRoom, and which has a Windows clone called Dark Room.
Using full screen mode in a standard text editor is a good start, but it's generally not as minimalist as it could be, and the text is all bunched over on one side of the screen. You don't need toolbars, you don't need tabs, hell, you don't even need menus. Sometimes, you just want to focus on what you're writing.