oh my god so I downloaded this just to try it and ended up writing 1500 words in like 20 minutes. I'm combining the backgrounds with sounds on MyNoise and I'm obsessed. My only suggestion would be the addition of minor formatting options (such as bold/italics/strikethrough, maybe an option to add a vertical space between paragraphs) but even without those I still love this app. Thank you!!
A total necessity for writing for anyone. A simple yet effective landmark in digital writing. I can't believe this wasn't thought of sooner, but I'm so glad you did.
Absolutely adore the app and its been wonderful in helping me get writing. I have encountered one wildly weird (if frustrating) effect when I do this and play a game on controller at the same time
So for context I play FFXIV and during long queue times I'll write and when I'm done with my duty I'll go back and write more, only to find that Stimuwrite has closed. I noticed in the middle of a dungeon that it was opening menus while I was doing my rotation despite Stimuwrite not being the program actively being used at the moment.
Weird but manageable during 1.12! I just get what I've gotten during the session from the Recover menu and put my word goal back where it belonged and tada I'm back at it for another eons long queue time in XIV.
just wanted to drop in and say that i LOVE using this app! it's really been helping me with writing first drafts and getting back into the habit of writing. thank you! i can't wait to see the stimuwrite 2.
Just downloaded this to try it out, it feels great! There are some things that bother me with it though. Mainly, even though i have a retina display (on a MacBook), the app opens in low resolution, which makes the fonts look awful, and there seem to be some kerning issues as well (irregular spacing between letters), especially with smaller window sizes.
Something else, which may be a bit harder to fix, is that if i resize the window, i get black bars on the top/bottom or the sides. It would be nice if the writing window tried to fill the whole window (while still keeping its aspect ratio), while the background would zoom to cover the whole window.
I’ve also attached a screenshot so you can see the kerning issues, hopefully you get what i mean. It’s especially noticeable in these example letter combinations: lly, hile, it, ill, le, uld, alle.
Oh! Another suggestion i just thought of. It would be lovely if the different backgrounds had fitting ambience sounds (togglable, probably, since not everyone might want it).
Also, please do let me know if there’s a better place to give suggestions about this. I just went for the itch comments since that’s what everyone else seems to be doing.
Hi! I made an account just to give my thanks for this, it's a real game-changer. I've written more in the last few days than the past month!
I have just two suggestions:
The sound-keypress feature is great, I love the 'typewriter' option. Can the sound-code recognize when Enter is pressed to play a special sound as a new line is created? Like the "Ding!" a typewriter makes when you reach the end of a line. That would be so cool!
Add the option to auto-launch on computer startup - sometimes getting started is the hardest thing. But if the app is already open in front of you, then...
Most operating systems (i think?) have mechanisms for opening certain apps on login/restart. I know for certain macOS does. You can try googling how to set up any app to open automatically for your OS, it should be pretty simple.
I'm really loving this app, it's making it so much easier for me to write and stay focused for longer, so thank you!
I am having a weird issue with it on my Mac, though. Whenever I use the app my fans get really loud, and it says that it's using 90% of my cpu. is this normal? I'm using a 2019 macbook pro.
I really love this app! Love the stimuli as it provides it to me altogether instead of me breaking minute after minute to seek it out myself by switching tabs/scrolling through social media/etc. Also the word count goal function makes long pieces super easy to break down.
Only issue I've found is my screen flashes/glitches/displays the static day background every minute? few minutes? whenever I'm using a background that isn't static day.
Ok it wasn't flashing for a bit but it started up again occasionally but not as frequent as before? I'd switched to light mode and changed the background back and forth and now it stopped so I'm not sure what caused it to start up again in the first place?
I've been enjoying the app on my primary laptop but it doesn't like the graphics card on my cheaper laptop with just an onboard low end video card, I've been using it to good effect otherwise though, thank you!
It's a qualcom adreno 618 GPU, when I tried to launch the application it gave me an error message, my "video card doesn't support the right openGL version, if i have an old or integrated gpu upgrade it". Harsh but fair maybe? Works on my gaming laptop but I don't lug this thing to the coffee shop :p
I get this error too, trying to install on an older Windows PC with an integrated graphics card. Can't update the drivers any further. Both v1 and v2 won't install on this machine.
I'm having the same problem as Beesmm below me! It says it needs to be updated and can't be scanned for viruses so they won't let me install it! Excited to try eventually though!
I'm still figure out the "need to update" part but the "cannot check for malicious software" is a standard message that comes up because I'm not a part of Apple's developer program. As long as you only get StimuWrite from official sources (this page currently is the only one), you'll be safe.
Try this:
Drag the app into your applications folder.
Open the Finder and navigate to the application.
Right click or control click the StimuWrite icon and select open.
Click the Open button that comes up and it should open and not give you a warning anymore.
Hello! I just tried to open this on my iMac (OS Monterey v12.8) and it was unable to open the software because the app "needs to be updated." Has anyone else had this problem? Am I doing something incorrectly?
When I first tried to open it there was dialog because Apple can't verify it. I didn't make a screenshot for this app but it was similar dialog to this
This comes up because I'm not a part of Apple's developer program. As long as you only get StimuWrite from official sources (this page currently is the only place), you'll be safe.
Try this:
Drag the app into your applications folder.
Open the Finder and navigate to the application.
Right click or control click the StimuWrite icon and select open.
Click the Open button that comes up and it should open and not give you a warning anymore.
I ADORE THIS PROGRAM THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING!! I do have two questions!!
a) Is it possible to toggle off the hearts? Every other feature is pitch perfect to what I need!
b) I was curious if it would be possible for users to put their own custom moving backgrounds into the program, I use focuswriter a lot so I'm a little spoiled in terms of being able to put Custom Stuff in there
Love this! Was having a difficult time making words happen in my other writing app (Zenwriter) and I have ADHD so wanted to give this a try. Was able to knock out 1,200 words and counting after download. Small bug report, but when I try to set the moving BGs, it will flash the static day BG every now and then. But a very good writing app for dopamine deprived people like me! : D
Thank you! If you don't mind emailing me your system info and graphic card info and whether you were using full screen mode when the flickering happened, that would be helpful. Email:
Hello! Sorry I didn't get back to you. I've downloaded the new version and tried the video BGs. No flashing so far : D If it's still helpful, my device info is: HP Laptop 17 by 3xxx, windows 10 Home 64bit, version 21H1, processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1005G1 CPU @ 1.20GHz 1.20 GHz.
Really helpful program for writing. However, it would be nice if program had some kind of default options from regular text redactors like "Open", "Find", and "Replace with...". Also a working "CTRL+S" key would be cool.
Thank you for the feedback! Those features were actually left out intentionally, so they won't be added in the next version. StimuWrite isn't meant to be a replacement for your word processor, more of a companion drafting app. The program discourages editing inside of it by design.
I like the idea of this, personally I find the typing sounds a little too loud. I can just turn the volume of the entire program down, but adding a slider would be nice for simplicity.
Also not personally a fan of the emotes, a way to make them smaller/less obtrusive would be nice. They're a bit distracting to me as they are. The progress bar is really nice and motivating, though.
This is a really good idea though, and I'm curious to see where it goes!
This is pretty great. Now, I'm not neurodivergent, but I can easily get distrcted when writting and this helps out a lot. The only 'problem' I could find is the lack of a grammar check, but that's really not a big deal as I can simply copy/paste everything to a text editor.
This is a 10/10 for me and I'll keep an eye to see it improve more and more.
I like this a lot! The sounds don't really work with my typing speed; I wonder if it'd be worth including an option to only make a noise every fourth or fifth keystroke. Love it though.
First off, I really love this - this is helping me so much with focus and productivity.
Second, I've noticed a few bugs:
On my work PC (but not my personal PC?), all the animated backgrounds flicker/blink briefly whenever the animation loops, which is distracting enough that I can only use the static ones.
The word counter does not count new rows as a separation of words, which makes the wordcount inaccurate for the format I often have to use for work (see picture for an example).
I like the celebratory burst of emoji when you hit 100%, but it only does this the first time you hit 100% - and my work often involves batches of shorter texts, so I only get it for the first of my texts.
Overall an excellent program, though - thank you so much for this.
Hi! I actually just uploaded a new version that should fix the flickering issue, please give it a try and let me know if it solved the problem for you :)
Hi! This is a great idea, I'm excited to try it out! I wonder if there's room for implementing a timer of some kind - I know sprints and deadlines can be motivating, so that might be a nice feature to add down the line (if you plan for further dev ofc.) Will definitely be sharing with other writer friends, thank you again!
This is neat! A great idea. I'm going to give it a try.
I noticed there's a bit of a visible cut when the coffee shop background loops and I'm not sure how I feel about the hearts and other emojis yet but I'm going to give it time and see if it grows on me. :)
Hello there! That file extension should be executable on 64bit linux machines. Maybe I need to make a 32 bit build? What error message do you get when you try to execute it, and what version of linux are you running?
I'm using the itch.io desktop app and it says "No manager for installer unknown". In the stack trace it says "no mapping for file extension .86_64". I'm running Pop!OS 64-bit:
$ lspcu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
It worked when I manually downloaded + made executable. I usually install via the desktop app to have automatic updates but I expect you won't be making updates as frequently as games do so it should be all right. Thanks!
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oh my god so I downloaded this just to try it and ended up writing 1500 words in like 20 minutes. I'm combining the backgrounds with sounds on MyNoise and I'm obsessed. My only suggestion would be the addition of minor formatting options (such as bold/italics/strikethrough, maybe an option to add a vertical space between paragraphs) but even without those I still love this app. Thank you!!
Thank you! Those are great suggestions
A total necessity for writing for anyone. A simple yet effective landmark in digital writing. I can't believe this wasn't thought of sooner, but I'm so glad you did.
Thank you so much for this. I lost my motivation for writing and this really helped.
Absolutely adore the app and its been wonderful in helping me get writing. I have encountered one wildly weird (if frustrating) effect when I do this and play a game on controller at the same time
So for context I play FFXIV and during long queue times I'll write and when I'm done with my duty I'll go back and write more, only to find that Stimuwrite has closed. I noticed in the middle of a dungeon that it was opening menus while I was doing my rotation despite Stimuwrite not being the program actively being used at the moment.
Weird but manageable during 1.12! I just get what I've gotten during the session from the Recover menu and put my word goal back where it belonged and tada I'm back at it for another eons long queue time in XIV.
Thank you for altering me to this issue, it should be fixed in version 2 :)
just wanted to drop in and say that i LOVE using this app! it's really been helping me with writing first drafts and getting back into the habit of writing. thank you! i can't wait to see the stimuwrite 2.
I’m so glad to hear that! Thanks for letting me know
Just downloaded this to try it out, it feels great! There are some things that bother me with it though. Mainly, even though i have a retina display (on a MacBook), the app opens in low resolution, which makes the fonts look awful, and there seem to be some kerning issues as well (irregular spacing between letters), especially with smaller window sizes.
Something else, which may be a bit harder to fix, is that if i resize the window, i get black bars on the top/bottom or the sides. It would be nice if the writing window tried to fill the whole window (while still keeping its aspect ratio), while the background would zoom to cover the whole window.
I’ve also attached a screenshot so you can see the kerning issues, hopefully you get what i mean. It’s especially noticeable in these example letter combinations: lly, hile, it, ill, le, uld, alle.
Oh! Another suggestion i just thought of. It would be lovely if the different backgrounds had fitting ambience sounds (togglable, probably, since not everyone might want it).
Also, please do let me know if there’s a better place to give suggestions about this. I just went for the itch comments since that’s what everyone else seems to be doing.
Thank you for the suggestions! These are all issues I’ll address in the rebuilt version 2.
Hi! I made an account just to give my thanks for this, it's a real game-changer. I've written more in the last few days than the past month!
I have just two suggestions:
Again, thank you so much for the app!
Also saving the last-used Background/Theme/Font etc would be nice :)
Most operating systems (i think?) have mechanisms for opening certain apps on login/restart. I know for certain macOS does. You can try googling how to set up any app to open automatically for your OS, it should be pretty simple.
Thank you for these excellent suggestions! Good to know for version 2
an option for a bigger writing scrren would be neat, other wise, pretty good!
thank you! Version 2 just came out and you can increase the writing area by hiding the control panel :)
I'm really loving this app, it's making it so much easier for me to write and stay focused for longer, so thank you!
I am having a weird issue with it on my Mac, though. Whenever I use the app my fans get really loud, and it says that it's using 90% of my cpu. is this normal? I'm using a 2019 macbook pro.
Hmm that doesn't seem normal! I will look into it and see if there is anything I can do to improve performance.
hi! Version 2 just came out and it has performance improvements along with many others, so hopefully it will be easier on your computer :)
That's awesome! thank you, I cant wait to try it out!
I really love this app! Love the stimuli as it provides it to me altogether instead of me breaking minute after minute to seek it out myself by switching tabs/scrolling through social media/etc. Also the word count goal function makes long pieces super easy to break down.
Only issue I've found is my screen flashes/glitches/displays the static day background every minute? few minutes? whenever I'm using a background that isn't static day.
Hi! I actually just uploaded a new version that should fix this issue, please give it a try and let me know if it solved the problem for you :)
Just checked and it did solve the issue! Thanks so much :D
Ok it wasn't flashing for a bit but it started up again occasionally but not as frequent as before? I'd switched to light mode and changed the background back and forth and now it stopped so I'm not sure what caused it to start up again in the first place?
Hey, this is a really good app! The only I'd add is a timer! I think that would help me stop getting distracted.
Thank you!
I've been enjoying the app on my primary laptop but it doesn't like the graphics card on my cheaper laptop with just an onboard low end video card, I've been using it to good effect otherwise though, thank you!
Thank you for the info! May I ask what is the issue with secondary laptop and what the graphics card is?
It's a qualcom adreno 618 GPU, when I tried to launch the application it gave me an error message, my "video card doesn't support the right openGL version, if i have an old or integrated gpu upgrade it". Harsh but fair maybe? Works on my gaming laptop but I don't lug this thing to the coffee shop :p
I get this error too, trying to install on an older Windows PC with an integrated graphics card. Can't update the drivers any further. Both v1 and v2 won't install on this machine.
I'll look into seeing if there is a way I can modify a version that supports older graphics cards. It may be possible. Sorry about that!
I'm having the same problem as Beesmm below me! It says it needs to be updated and can't be scanned for viruses so they won't let me install it! Excited to try eventually though!
I'm still figure out the "need to update" part but the "cannot check for malicious software" is a standard message that comes up because I'm not a part of Apple's developer program. As long as you only get StimuWrite from official sources (this page currently is the only one), you'll be safe.
Try this:
You can find more info on the apple website here. I hope that helps!
Hello! I just tried to open this on my iMac (OS Monterey v12.8) and it was unable to open the software because the app "needs to be updated." Has anyone else had this problem? Am I doing something incorrectly?
Oh no, I haven't seen this problem before. Is there anymore info you can give me? An error message maybe?
When I first tried to open it there was dialog because Apple can't verify it. I didn't make a screenshot for this app but it was similar dialog to this
You want to go to Mac settings, security and privacy. You'll see a prompt for whether you want to open Inkdrop, click open anyways on that prompt.
This comes up because I'm not a part of Apple's developer program. As long as you only get StimuWrite from official sources (this page currently is the only place), you'll be safe.
Try this:
You can find more info on the apple website here. I hope that helps!
I ADORE THIS PROGRAM THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING!! I do have two questions!!
a) Is it possible to toggle off the hearts? Every other feature is pitch perfect to what I need!
b) I was curious if it would be possible for users to put their own custom moving backgrounds into the program, I use focuswriter a lot so I'm a little spoiled in terms of being able to put Custom Stuff in there
Thank you for the feedback! Both of those are features I'm considering for version 2
hello! I just released version 2 of StimuWrite and it has the feature to turn off the emojis :)
THANK YOU EVE FOR MY LIFE
Love this! Was having a difficult time making words happen in my other writing app (Zenwriter) and I have ADHD so wanted to give this a try. Was able to knock out 1,200 words and counting after download. Small bug report, but when I try to set the moving BGs, it will flash the static day BG every now and then. But a very good writing app for dopamine deprived people like me! : D
Thank you! If you don't mind emailing me your system info and graphic card info and whether you were using full screen mode when the flickering happened, that would be helpful. Email:
stimuwrite @ eveharms.com
Hi! I actually just uploaded a new version that should fix this issue, please give it a try and let me know if it solved the problem for you :)
Hello! Sorry I didn't get back to you. I've downloaded the new version and tried the video BGs. No flashing so far : D If it's still helpful, my device info is: HP Laptop 17 by 3xxx, windows 10 Home 64bit, version 21H1, processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1005G1 CPU @ 1.20GHz 1.20 GHz.
Really helpful program for writing.
However, it would be nice if program had some kind of default options from regular text redactors like "Open", "Find", and "Replace with...". Also a working "CTRL+S" key would be cool.
Thanks a lot for your hard work.
Thank you for the feedback! Those features were actually left out intentionally, so they won't be added in the next version. StimuWrite isn't meant to be a replacement for your word processor, more of a companion drafting app. The program discourages editing inside of it by design.
I like the idea of this, personally I find the typing sounds a little too loud. I can just turn the volume of the entire program down, but adding a slider would be nice for simplicity.
Also not personally a fan of the emotes, a way to make them smaller/less obtrusive would be nice. They're a bit distracting to me as they are. The progress bar is really nice and motivating, though.
This is a really good idea though, and I'm curious to see where it goes!
Thank you for the feedback!
hello! I just released version 2 of StimuWrite and it has the ability to change the volume and turn off the emotes
This is pretty great. Now, I'm not neurodivergent, but I can easily get distrcted when writting and this helps out a lot. The only 'problem' I could find is the lack of a grammar check, but that's really not a big deal as I can simply copy/paste everything to a text editor.
This is a 10/10 for me and I'll keep an eye to see it improve more and more.
Thank you!
I like this a lot! The sounds don't really work with my typing speed; I wonder if it'd be worth including an option to only make a noise every fourth or fifth keystroke. Love it though.
That's a great idea, thank you for the feedback :)
First off, I really love this - this is helping me so much with focus and productivity.
Second, I've noticed a few bugs:
Overall an excellent program, though - thank you so much for this.
This is helpful, thank you! Do you mind sharing your system information on the computer that has the flickering issue?
Is this what you need? (am not a tech expert)
Thank you, that's really helpful! If you don't mind also including your graphics card info that would be great. You can find that here https://www.windowscentral.com/how-determine-graphics-card-windows-10
Looks like it's Intel HD Graphics 4600.
Hi! I actually just uploaded a new version that should fix the flickering issue, please give it a try and let me know if it solved the problem for you :)
It works, thank you!!
Love this, but I would love an option to tone down the emojis just a tiny bit. Fantastic work and absurdly helpful
Thank you for the feedback!
hello! I just released version 2 of StimuWrite and it has the ability to tone down or turn off the emojis
the progress bar helpful fr !!
Hi! This is a great idea, I'm excited to try it out! I wonder if there's room for implementing a timer of some kind - I know sprints and deadlines can be motivating, so that might be a nice feature to add down the line (if you plan for further dev ofc.) Will definitely be sharing with other writer friends, thank you again!
Thanks for the suggestion!
This is neat! A great idea. I'm going to give it a try.
I noticed there's a bit of a visible cut when the coffee shop background loops and I'm not sure how I feel about the hearts and other emojis yet but I'm going to give it time and see if it grows on me. :)
Are you going to develop a web version for Chrome OS ?
I am looking into this!
Hello! The Linux file is downloading as extension "x86-64" so it can't open. Is it supposed to be a .deb, .tar.gz, .appimage...? Thank you!
Hello there! That file extension should be executable on 64bit linux machines. Maybe I need to make a 32 bit build? What error message do you get when you try to execute it, and what version of linux are you running?
I'm using the itch.io desktop app and it says "No manager for installer unknown". In the stack trace it says "no mapping for file extension .86_64". I'm running Pop!OS 64-bit:
Maybe you have to make the file executable? I found a site with a guide on how to do that, please let me know if it works https://linuxhint.com/make-file-executable-linux/
It worked when I manually downloaded + made executable. I usually install via the desktop app to have automatic updates but I expect you won't be making updates as frequently as games do so it should be all right. Thanks!
Thank you! I will make sure that version 2 is set up with itchio's butler so that installation and updates are smooth.
I can't open it on my Macbook because Apple says the app can't be checked for malicious software. Is there anything you can do to fix this?
Try this:
You can find more info on the apple website here. I hope that helps!
When this happens, you can also go into your Security and Privacy settings and there will be an option to allow the program to open!