Ed Johnson-Williams

Announcing "Draft One" – a new text editor

Published:

Tags: New App Tauri

Draft One is a new app I’ve built. I’m calling it a text editor for focused first drafts. It’s a simple app, but I think it’s going to be really useful for people.

A screenshot of the starting screen of Draft One with the words 'Draft One – For focused first drafts' above it

If you ever find yourself double-guessing yourself when you’re writing – and therefore slowing down – this app might be for you.

Or maybe you spend ages fixing your typos – when what you really want to be doing is just getting a first draft down?

Draft One is a text editor that won’t let you edit, delete or undo text. This helps you to get out of the habit of double-guessing yourself and cleaning up your typos on your first draft.

The thinking is that you can’t write freely and edit at the same time.

Editing flips your brain out of the flow state you need for good first drafts. Editing gets you into a critical – not a creative – mindset.

Draft One’s available on macOS already.

And I’m working on getting a Windows version out soon.

Here’re some more marketing screenshots that I uploaded to the Mac App Store

A screenshot of Draft One with the words 'Ignore self-doubt and typos. Write now. Edit later.' above it. The editor contains the text 'Draft One won't let you edit, delete or undo text. Here's why...1. Making lots of edits and fixing typos flips your brain out of flow state and into a critical mindset. 2. Draft One helps you focus on simply converting your thoughts into text. 3. That way you can stay focused and leave your editing for later'

A screenshot of Draft One with the words 'Stick to the basics, A few simple formatting options' above it. The editor shows various formating options including headings, bold, italic, and bulletpoint and numbered lists

A screenshot of Draft One showing the warning when you try to delete text

A screenshot of Draft One and of Google Docs with the same text in both editors. The text 'Edit later in other apps. Stay in flow in Draft One' is above the screenshots.'

There’s loads more to say about the technical side.

I built it with Tauri, which is a fairly new framework for building desktop apps with web technologies. There are some really good things about it, but definitely some rough edges too.

Speaking of rough edges…building an app for the Mac App Store is a whole new world of pain.

Draft One’s built with a bunch of other amazing open source projects too.

I’ll write more about the technical stuff and the Mac App Store stuff soon.

Let me know if you find it useful or have feedback or ideas!