Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta

I've always felt that the best part of writing on a computer is the ability to edit while you write, however, I also understand that doesn't work at all for a lot of people, so I think this app is neat even though I personally wouldn't use it.

bayindirh · 2 months ago

Sometimes forcing yourself "not to edit" allows you to bring out things which are hard to catch and hide in the nooks and crannies of your mind.

Brain dumping also works the same way. You write whatever you have in your mind, without even correcting spelling errors. It really brings out things you don't know they are there and bothering you or taking space.

You should at least try once. Takes an hour or so.

I also use a similar method for drafting my blog posts if I have the idea, but can't bring out the rest of the text.

bossyTeacher · 2 months ago

sounds like a write-only stream of thought style, what is then the difference between that and recording yourself talking and then auto transcribing the audio?

to me the ability to manipulate thought fragments is the killer feature of writing. If I want to get stuff out without needing to see it immediately, i just record my voice talking

jkmcf · 2 months ago

I've always felt the best part of writing on a computer is legibility :)

Very nice, I've been wanting to build something like this myself but haven't gotten to it. The coffee shop mode is great! My biggest feature request would be changing the font and cursor. The blinking cursor is both distracting and unnecessary as you should assume that you are at the end anyway (since you shouldn't edit)!

rpastuszak · 2 months ago

noted, thanks!

I'm VERY conservative with adding new UI elements, especially those introducing new possible sources of distractions, so I might hide it behind a bunch of menus. That said, I've spent ages yak shaving / working on those problems already :)

ryanianian · 2 months ago

I really want a fixed-width font. I know most people dislike writing prose with monospace fonts. But I'm a developer, and proportional fonts always feel wrong.

bayindirh · 2 months ago

I'm on the same camp with you, however when you're writing technical documents, you need both, and Inter [0] is a really nice proportional font.

[0]: https://rsms.me/inter/

tecleandor · 2 months ago

Well, talk to a script writer, they only write on Courier typeface

_elf · 2 months ago

iNic · 2 months ago

d-lowl · 2 months ago

Although, I don't think that Enso as a whole will work for me (I have a very different approach to writting); I love the idea of the coffee shop mode. Want to implement something like this for Obsidian now.

achairapart · 2 months ago

This might be useful for a whole browser coffee shop mode:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/obfuscator/

tkgally · 2 months ago

I like that idea, too.

When I’m at home, I do most of my writing now with voice input. Would somebody please invent a sound cancellation device that will enable me to talk to my devices in coffee shops and on public transportation without being heard by others?

dabbz · 2 months ago

I know I've seen a handful of them no idea if they're real or not though:

https://metadox.pro/https://gethushme.com/

dgfitz · 2 months ago

Looks really neat. Took me a few minutes to figure out what it was. A description above the fold (or here!) would be great.

Added a link to the article, thank you!

Velorivox · 2 months ago

This reminds me of https://github.com/maebert/themostdangerouswritingapp

maebert · 2 months ago

Thanks for the shoutout!

I think it's funny that it's very similar to ensō in many ways, but also the complete opposite: ensō is calm, mindful, soothing. MDWa is hectic, terrifying, sadistic. Funny how a tiny difference produces products that look almost the same, and feel completely different.

huge props to rafal for creating ensō, personally really love it

spookie · 2 months ago

Reminds me of Apostrophe actually.

https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe

varun_chopra · 2 months ago

Oh man, I saw this once but forgot the name. Tried Googling, asked some LLMs—but alas, couldn’t find it again. Even an HN search didn’t turn up anything useful.

So glad to come across it again!

Good to know :)

At least my https://meat-gpt.sonnet.io gets indexed well, including 100s of AI websites who webscraped it and hallucinated product descriptions.

teucris · 2 months ago

Fantastic work. This is great example of how good execution is what really matters - not just good ideas. I’m sure I’m not the only one who had an idea similar to this at some point - mine was called “nanowriter” and was meant for NanoWriMo (RIP)[0] but I lacked the coding ability and executive function to actually make it.l at the time. Enso is gorgeous and… exists, and therefore is infinitely better.

0: https://storyempire.com/2025/04/28/nanowrimo-closing-what-we...

WD-42 · 2 months ago

Looks a lot like https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe for anyone on Linux

pdabbadabba · 2 months ago

These seem likely different concepts to me. Apostrophe is a nice looking markdown editor. Ensō is a minimalist writing tool (I hesitate to call it an 'editor') designed to facilitate a certain kind of writing by hiding text that has already been written and preventing the user from editing it. The focus here seems to be getting the writer to just get the words out and then use a (presumably) different tool to format and edit later.

Apostrophe does the same thing, it’s just not really shown on the store page. It provides both distraction free and Hemingway modes. Hemingway mode doesn’t let you use backspace!