With computers being as powerful as they are these days, I often find myself distracted by the many applications I have running at the same time, even though I really want to be writing, or at least should be writing.

Enter WriteRoom (now in 1.0), a full-screen text editor that reminds me of WordPerfect 5.0 - what used to be my favorite text editor back in the day.

WriteRoom

As you can see from the spartan screenshot - in zoom or full-screen mode WriteRoom completely abolishes taskbars, menus, popups and other things that will get in the way of your writing tasks and the best part is it actually works.

WriteRoom supports cut, copy, paste - you know standard stuff. It also can spell-check as you write, and you can perform manual spell-checking in the case that automated spell-checking gets in your way. Rounding off the list, the minimal editor supports AppleScript, right-to-left writing, and speech-to-text, and of course printing. Pretty full-featured for a free editor, and encompasses most of the features that have Mac users scrambling for a copy of Microsoft Word.

For you Windows people out there, you can always download DarkRoom, the Windows equivalent of WriteRoom that is also totally free.