Dark Room

Lola Vanslette says:

Please let me know when you have this for Windows Vista.

Thanks,

Lola Vanslette

Alex says:

Thanks for writing this. It looks like a fun tool to help me focus on my writing.

Karirinkate says:

Is this project alive? I’m wondering if it works pretty well on Windows Vista/7

Dirt says:

It works fine on vista.

Wondering where all the comments went to. Having a problem with text size which I have had before and I remember there was a couple of comments for a very simple shortcut style fix…

Danni El-Kher says:

This is a great app! I really love it… Although there’s one feature I would love to see; a full screen lock. I often get distracted because I have to check my mail, facebook or whatever. If this app featured a time specific lock so that you can’t exit the full screen mode in a specific time (specified by the user when entering the full screen mode) this wouldn’t be a problem anymore, because you are forced to focus on the task in front of you…

Just an idea ïŠ

Danni El-Kher says:

BTW: Works well on Windows 7 RC!

Corinna says:

Great idea Danni I know what you mean.

Lola, it works fine for me on Windows Vista Ultimate, 32-bits. You may just need to download the .NET framework from Microsoft.com…

Thanks for writing this, Mr. Developer

Corinna says:

(By the way, the emoticon in my comment was supposed to be a face smiling, not a neutral guy with a moustache…)

Karthik says:

Hey this is a great tool…. but…. but…. it does not support saving Unicode text… I lost almost 12 hours of effort in writing in a non-English language

Preet says:

This software is great! And it works great on Windows 7 too! I pinned it to my taskbar.

zelota says:

Dark room will automaticly transform the UNIX newline character to windows form.
This is not what I wanted.
Can you add the new features like windows newline to unix newline or unix newline to windows newline ?

Nick Pappas says:

Very nice. I’m running it on Windows Vista 64-bit. No issues. It has become my main tool. Thank you.

real estate says:

Ok so now I’m feeling really stupid. I’m going to download this because apparently I can’t live without it even though I have no clue what its about.

I came here from a page about no distractions and immediately find myself being distracted. I should have been born a bower bird cause I think any shiny trinket seems to get my attention

real estate com says:

Ah, now that I downloaded it and it worked immediately I feel good about myself again:-)

It’s a bit of a shock when the screen disappears completely and I was rather relieved when I intuitively hit the escape key and normal service was resumed. But now having done that, I can see how this will be a very cool piece of software to blot out the bright lights of distraction when I write my articles in the future.

College Station Web Design says:

The only thing missing is the ability to customize the context menu; that aside, it is a pleasure using Dark Room.

College Station Web Design says:

(That, and remembering the file reloaded already exists: it seems like hitting Ctrl+S should save the reloaded file, not bring up the Save As dialog – this consistently happens upon re-opening DR.)

Eduardo says:

Hi! I would like to thank you about this software. It reminded me times when the fastest computer were an Apple IIe with a green CRT.
Lovely.

Konstructor says:

I have this on my Vista SP1 laptop. No troubles at all. I simply copied the whole thing to my profile folder so it could not interfere with UAC and folder access rights when saving configs and then simply added a link to the desktop.

Doug says:

Wow, just heard of this software from Ewen Chias newsletter. Haven’t ever seen or heard about it before, how is being promoted? anyway, I plan on giving it a try since so many find it helpful. thanks to everyone! (and happy online marketing, too)

gaby de wilde says:

nice

Amerigo says:

Well…
I like this one better than Q10 because of the right click options. However, the right click menu does not have file options (open, close, quit, etc.) and there is nothing that shows the keyboard options available.
Please add a file> menu to the right click menu.
What I would really like, is to have something like this for Linux.

Nicole Leafty says:

I love using the darkroom. It is the perfect writing program. I’m very impressed.

I have a few small requests, however. The next time you tweak it, could you make justified alignment available? It would also be incredibly helpful if a bold, underline, & italics function were present. These features help insert a bit more feeling into a piece of writing.

Good luck with your current projects! Thank you for sharing this program with the public!

max says:

thank u!!! nice soft!

Sykik says:

Great tool! Thanks.

apollo says:

Dont let it crash if it cannot find the config file. Im starting to use it. Very very nice. Thanks

Chris says:

Great program! Perfectly emulates what I’ve come to love in the Mac version. I recently got a netbook to write away from the desktop and I pulled down DarkRoom, but there is ONE piece I find myself missing – spell check! Any chance of getting that into a future version? Thank you for your continued efforts!

oopee says:

Nice software. This really help me to write better content and increase productivity by decreasing interrupts.

One bug:
My lenovo’s keyboard has touchbad and an another mouse. I don’t know its name. It is small red button and touching it moves the mouse cursor. I cannot roll darkroom using that second mouse. This could be very useful feature.

SH says:

thanks for the program!
would love to see options for emphasizing text in the next upgrade (bold, italic etc.)

Uli says:

I am wondering what the four symbols on the right are good for. Could you give me clue? Thanks!

JSB says:

Great little program. Clean, Simple, No clutter. I would love to see a few very basic functions added. Bold (CTRL+B), Underline (CTRL+U), Italics (CRTL+I) and a spell checker (F7) that would underline errors and list suggestions in the context menu when you right click on each word. Kind of like Firefox. But toggle the underlining on and off with F7 to maintain that clean elegant look.

Sam says:

(the following is from my first launch of the program. The blinking cursor told me to write, so I did… )
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
So this is what it feel like to write undistracted. This is pleasantly surprising, although I might appreciate it more if the text started a few lines below the top of the screen. Its kinda high up there.

Maybe a scrolling up feature where you’re always typing on the center line of the screen and subsequent lines scroll up when you return as opposed to the curser moving down. More like a typewriter? Maybe that would be obnoxious. It would be hard to tell without trying it though. Maybe it could be an optional mode.

I can’t believe, though, how much is coming out of my finger tips. I keep going and going like an energizer bunny. I feel like I am inside a computer, by myself, and the universe doesn’t exist. There is no spell checker to yell at me, there is no blank white screen hurting my eyes, and most importantly there are no buttons to look at and wonder what they do…

The green might need to be toned down a bit, but other than that (assumiung I can figure out the keystrokes to save and exit this fullscreen “nonsence”), I think I might be in love with my new favorite text editor…

WOAH!! I bet I could use this for HTML, C++, and all those types as well! That would be fantastic… I don’t have a program that highlights html code anyway… Might as well be on a clean screen!

Ok I have to stop before I get carried away. My fingers are almost as fast as my thoughts. That can get dangerous. Might get typerwriter arms tangled with each other… or is this the kind with the golf ball on the end?

As long as I have a backspace key, I’m fine. That is the real advantage of the “Digital Age”. The backspace key.

Thank you, Lord, for providing us writers with the Backspace on our 102s, 104s, and even the 200 key LED light up gaming keyboards. Of all the buttons on these damn things, while the space bar may be the most commonly used key, the backspace is, in my humble oppinion, the most revolutionary and subsequently seemingly important.

Too late, I went on a damn tangent. Ok, its quittin time. Before I run out of room on my screen!

Ok, now for some keystrokes… So ctr-s works. Thats good. Thats really all I need… other than that, I can ctr-alt-del to quit the program if I have to, but in the mean time, I’ll go with alt-F4.

Thank you, Dark Room. Thank you, genuinely.

Asif says:

Thanks for the Application, It really is a Good Thing, But I am Addicted to MS Office, as it solves evey other problem such as, Word Count, Heading etc.

John Landells says:

I think DarkRoom is a great tool for writing articles.

I do have a question though: I use dual monitors when I’m working with the secondary monitor being the one that I use for most of my work. Is there a way to get DR to start on the secondary monitor, rather than the primary? I guess a simple registry entry to remember the window position on exit then re-read on opening would do the trick.

Many thanks,
-John.

katy says:

thank you so much; this is wonderful. when i was little (my mother was a computer programmer, so i’ve been on computers all my life, and grew up with dos and whatever the writing program was then), i used to write like this – now it’s so much easier for me, and i’ve only just downloaded it. i wrote 500 words easily, without being worried about typos or space or anything else. i mean, i’m usually fairly focused, but somehow this dark room is my muse. i love it – thank you!

Nak says:

This is a great programme, but there’s one feature I’d love it to have: an automatic long dash! Basically so this: — becomes this: —.

Mek says:

Can you add Unicode support. Even simple notepad gives you the option of saving the fill in ANSI or some Unicode variant. Also is this project still alive? If not please tell us and/or release the source code so somebody can take it up.

Otherwise great piece of software. Thanks alot for starting it up anyhow!

Hope says:

It looks great. But I don’t know how to get the Darkroom.exe.config to work. I’d really prefer grey text. And clicking on the symbols at the side of the screen doesn’t do anything. It would be a really great programme to get my muse going. So I hope someone can help…..

Nathaniel Sabanski says:

This software is lovely, thank you.

Joshua says:

It’s great. Just one request though: middle-button scrolling. This is when you click the middle/scroll button and just move your mouse up/down to scroll. I use this practically all the time to scroll through large amounts of text.

Javier says:

Hi!

I love the software. Any news on the Open Source project front? I’ve been googling around, and I haven’t found the project page, etc.

Best Regards

Javier

Paul Scott says:

Darkroom is great! Thanks very much for taking the time to put it together. There’s a couple of features that I’d like to see, though. I understand that it’s a distractionless writing environment for plain text, but I don’t think that that necessarily means you don’t have to include features.

I think that you Darkroom could really benefit from:

1. Replace — An implementation of find and replace in the style of Firefox/E-Text editor would be great for an app like this;
2. Text alignment — Obviously you can’t align text in the style of Word because we’re using plain text, but it is possibly to simulate centering, right-alignment and even full justification by inserting spaces where necessary. (ie. inserting a number of spaces equal to [the width of a line of text minus the length of the string of text on the current line] divided by 2 at the beginning of said line will effectively center the text.)
3. Styling — If you’re writing a long text document (which is likely, given that you’ve created a distractionelss environment in which to do so) you normally have to format with headings, bullet points, etc. Some shortcut keys for inserting wrapping the current line in arbitrary text would be cool (eg. you might want to put “==” before and after a level one heading, “===” after a level two, etc; or you might want to put “\t* ” before a list item.

Anyway, these are just some thoughts that I had whilst using Darkroom. I really like what you’ve already got. Thanks again.

Paul Scott says:

Also optional line numbering and some way of knowing whether a line is being wrapped or is new would be great.

Michael Saitov says:

Download link is broken; -i downloaded from Cnet

Jonathon says:

I can’t seem to download it, something about the url not on the server .

I really wanted to give this a go, it’s such an incredible idea.

Jeffrey says:

Sorry about the broken link, guys. Iam in the process of switching servers, and getting dark room setup on it’s own domain. I’ll have the link fixed today and I’ll send you an email to let you know

Anon says:

Download Link is broken. The one over CNET works fine

Zarko says:

Jeffrey, you rock!
I’ve been using it a bit and now on the way to getting hooked on it.
Keep it up and I’ll gladly donate some if it proves to contribute to my productivity.
Thank you

Barbara Fox says:

Hi Jeffrey,

This is a great app!
Thanks for making it.

Im trying to find out what ‘neutral highlighting’ actually is.
Sorry if it is a stupid question, but Im wondering if it has something to do with the feature I would love to have in this app: being able to highlight words, sentences or pieces of text.

Thanks again, Jeffrey.

Kind regards,

Barbara

CH says:

Lots of positive comments here, do you delete negative ones?

Ci Ci says:

I would love the ability to underline, bold, italics and center the text. Those features would make this software perfect. I do love it though. It’s the only program I use to do my writing.

mark says:

Fantastic and thanks. Is there anyway to get bold (asc chr 2)? How about a way to set margins and tab spacing. What was this written in? Thanks again, with bold, tab and margin control this is just what I need!

Chichi Latté says:

Darkroom really works! Word/Open Office always made my forehead itch like staring at a busy mantelpiece. If I ever make a penny out of writing, I’ll send the first ones to you Jeff, thank you.

Andrew says:

Great soft!
There’s only one thing, though. It’s hard to navigate in large files. May be you can add a beautiful green scroll bar? And place in the options the check box “disable scroll bar” or something for those, who doesn’t want it.

Nikita says:

Great software. It if could save in Unicode, it would be perfect.

nemo says:

Awesome program, only one complaint: you can’t paste copied text after you close Dark Room. Too many times have I written something in Dark Room, copied it, closed it, and tried to paste it into Word to no avail.

victor says:

Hi!
Did not take the time to read ´verything so I just put my question out:

Is there a way to safe files as .rtf as default format?

I don’t find anything in preferences.
since i move files to os x it would be a nice feature.
/victor

Maggie Tee says:

Looks very interesting.

å°ç±³ï¼ˆChinese） says:

我希望有中文版的。谢谢ï¼
I hope you have Chinese version, thank you
我是åšåº“中文网的编辑
I am BoKu publicchinese editor
如果你有好的作å“尚未å‘表，å¯ä»¥æ¥æˆ‘们这儿
If you have good works not been published, will we here

MV says:

I love DarkRoom, keep it coming.

Recently I started this new project:

http://code.google.com/p/coderoom/

It isn’t as mature as DarkRoom, but it supports syntax highlighting, which I really missed for writing Latex. I’m still using DarkRoom (or PyRoom) for most of my writing though.

James says:

just wanted to say thanks to you it is very useful to me

Matt says:

this program is love the only thing i ask is if you could add a print function

Gator Valle says:

I’m attempting to use this software in 2011, will there be an updated version anytime soon mate?

cheers,

- Gator Valle
Science Fiction writer
Vancouver, BC

wlb says:

This works great with Win7 Ultimate x64. I just love it.

Rancyd says:

wow! I love using this! haha, works very well on my win7~

i feel so scifi~

Shaun says:

Just wanted to leave you an appreciative comment about great Dark Room is, have you considered making a pro version and calling it Dark Mansion or Dark Room: Suite Edition?

Rafal says:

Great app. Please add text-align: justify option

jebug29 says:

Thank you! I have been looking for software like this for a little while. I like to have distraction free writing, or else I just can’t write something good. Again, thanks. ~Jesse Downing

Trevor Christensen says:

This is a great tool. I only write with this program now.

I have one feature request. Is there a possibility of an unsaved marker added to the window title? I never know if the program has saved my document or not, since there’s no cue.

Thanks.

Anastasia says:

Absolute perfection.

Seconds to download, and VOILA! 1985.

Please ignore every single plea to “add” anything.

(As a matter of fact, borrow a page from Coco Channel and take one accessory off, before you ever leave the house.)

Thank you, ever so much.

Jack Hope says:

Brilliant. Both the original and this Windows version.

Thanks!

Lee Saye says:

Look, I’m old, stupid, klutzotic, and fed up with systems I don’t understand and then change while I still don’t understand them. I loved the origianl Q&A, and have been prosterate with grief since Billy Boy took over the whole world.
Very interested in Dark Room. Stressed out by Word’s insisting on flashing menus, moving my text, and doing myraid other things every time I a breeze blows over a key.
queries:
Will Dark room let me type without all that barleyfizzle showing off?
Can you print from Dark room?
Can you save documents, find them, edit them and all that?
Can you paste documents into other documents like an e-mail? Tell me more.

Cayla says:

I used DarkRoom for a few months, but haven’t worked with it recently. Now I started using it again and wondered about the formatting. When I used it before I think I could use typographic quotes but now it won’t let them use me. It just puts the quotes like that: ” ”
Is there a way to use typographic quotes?

c says:

so cool!

Vicki Sprowles says:

It would be great if this program was updated for Windows 7 64bit.

uhlee says:

Just tried it on Win 7 64bit – works fine! Thanks to the developer!

Just one issue: If I put it into my usual “Programs” folder, changing the settings always causes an error message (because the program tries to write into the very program folder, which is write protected in Win 7). But only the message is annoying – if I quit and restart Darkroom, the settings remain changed.

And I use a German keyboard layout – after trying everything, I found the shortcut for the statistics to be ‘Ctrl+#’ for some strange reason.

Carlos Rivera says:

Awesome app, I would like to have a blog so this is just what I was looking for. Just perfect to write great posts, keep it up Thanks!

Vu says:

Hi, Jeff.

Quick programming question:
How does Darkroom handle the selection highlight color on the text control? I can’t find any other richedit program that manages to do this. Does Darkroom use SetSysColor? Or a SelChange event handler (with formatting + suspending undo)? I’ve been searching forever for the answer. I hope you’ll help out a fellow programmer.

– Vu

Callum Rakestraw says:

This is a great application. Thanks for making it available on Windows! Works wondrously.

Sird says:

Hello, one recommendation is being able to navigate to the bottom of a document immediately with the “end” key. If you’ve written 80k words, getting up and down in a document can by might slow otherwise. Love the product though! Huge thanks.

Jake says:

I may have posted before, but I wanted to show my gratitude again.

Awesome software, just wrote a small piece on it. It really, really does let me just write.

Robert says:

Really, really great. Installed it and whipped out 400 words without realizing it. As a typewriter enthusiast, I am responding well to the simplicity of words/no words on the screen. Keeps you focused and it’s super easy on the eyes. Thank you!

Barry says:

This is the best simple writing program since XyWrite. I would, however, like to know how to move up the text so that I am not for ever having to type at the very bottom of the screen.

Barry says:

Forget my earlier. I found the solution. Just hit the entry button several times.

ExxAge says:

I must say i’m fascinated by the program and i like it very much, keep the good work i have only one suggestion, to enable scroll via mouse, it would help navigating very much

G.N.R.S.U says:

I THINK IT IS USEFUL THAN writeroom!

Bob says:

Wonderful program!

Small suggestion: could you make it possible to disable the save window upon exiting?

Since Dark Room can load buffer text it doesn’t need to ask if you wish to save upon exiting: a user can be typing up a document, press “alt+F4″ to close the program, and then later resume his document without ever needing to save. So it’s fine if you want the save reminder, but I’d like to be able to turn it off, as I think this would make the writing-on-the-go process run smoother.

Pete says:

What would everyone think about making an email application based on this interface?

I’ve uploaded a few images of how I could imagine the thing looking:

Inbox:
http://img45.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=016179856_inbox_122_565lo.jpg

Read Message:
http://img281.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=016182499_reademail_122_358lo.jpg

Send Message:
http://img231.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=016185697_sendemail_122_31lo.jpg

So would this work?

I’m not saying that an email function should be added to Dark Room (though I guess that would be a possibility), but rather I’m wondering if people who like using Dark Room for typing would like a similar program for sending emails.

Jeff O'Connor says:

This is easily the single greatest thing I’ve found in ages. It’s also going to be the biggest reason I’ll actually start churning out my writing again.

I cannot thank you enough.

Ashley says:

Is there any sort of feature that focuses only on the sentence you’re writing, or maybe the possibility of it in an upcoming update? A couple of the mac-only products have that feature, but I’ve yet to find a windows compatible version.

Martin Herbert says:

Hi …. I wrote a little review of Dark Room here: http://artedstates.blogspot.com/2011/07/distraction-free-blogging.html

Keep up the good work!

Steven Vu says:

You can’t use opentype fonts!!!

Geoffrey Gordon says:

I have been using this program for a while now, works wonderfully, when I check for updates, it says their is one and it takes me here. But its the same version you have here ????

TV1710 says:

I’m a Vietnamese, and started using this tool from few days ago, but there’s a problem when using DarkRoom is font error. When editting on DR’s screen, its show me the correct characters (Vietnamese), but after save it in a txt file and re-open one again, then font is crash (some letters change to “?”, althrough i tried to change coding of txt file to utf-8). Anybody can help me.
//sorry about grammar mistakes what i have done in this comment, because i’m English is not my forte //

TV1710 says:

Oh, pretty good, i solved it

GADEL says:

This is a wonderful, distraction-free software for amateur and professional writers as well as bloggers.

Delali

Anton says:

Hey,

Love the program and the idea, very well executed. Quick question, possibly an expansion? Would there be any way to have this run as a wallpaper? I’d love to have something separate from all of my running applications and clutter when I have random to-dos pop into my head, and I haven’t been able to find anything out there that feasibly does it.

Romeo says:

As an article writer I really found this the most appropriate one for my writing. And really without any sort of destruction.

Thanks boss.

Ricky says:

Whether intentional or not (I’d guess not), I like that the program opens with restored text from the previous session. Only thing I’m not so sure about is that when I copy text from Darkroom to MS Word, all one-space paragraphs become double-spaced. A great tool.

Ricky says:

Hm, ignore my last comment on spacing, I tried it on a new document and copying didn’t change anything.

jewell says:

i need to know how to take it off my dad pressed somthing on his keyboard and now he cant get it off i really need to know what buttons you use to get it off? please tell meh.

Rebekah says:

I like! I was disappointed when I had to switch from a borrowed iMac to a PC to do my writing. My only problem:

Smart quotes.

I write fiction, and there’s usually a lot of dialogue. Is there a simple way to format smart-quotes with the “replace” function in OpenOffice? Or something I’m not thinking of?

kati says:

Is this still being worked on?

I love it, but I would love it a tiny bit more if there was line spacing

Helloo says:

Awesome program! Straight to the point no BS, its perfect!

I’m curious what are the chances of it freezing up on me and me losing my work? =\

Mr. IShouldBeWriting says:

Ummm…

No wait, first, I love it. It’s awesome. I’m so easily dis

SQUIRREL!!

-distracted. So thank you. But…

ummm… what are those little green squiggly thingies on the right margin? I click ‘em but they don’t do anything but highlight and then unhighlight my text. I feel like they’re kind of doing something somewhere, but I can’t figure out what. I’ll bet somewhere in Norway some dude’s garage door keeps opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing…

Little help?

MHA says:

Feature suggestion: Add support for “block” cursor (like the old consols!

MagSpain says:

Very good job! I’ll tell my friends too.

Is totally different from MsOffice, this lets you clearthinking, you have totally achieved your no distractions target.

If I were rich i’d give you a lot of €, but i’m not. Maybe in the future.

Thanks again! You’ll receive support from the community.

Distraction! says:

This is a most excellent tool! Just suggested it to my sister who is a writer. I absolutely love the green as well, favorite color(: I just typed out like 3 pages of stuff and can focus so much better now, thanks so much!!!!

stella says:

This program is perfect. Don’t change anything.

I note that everyone has been commenting about features they want… But the purpose of this app is to be simple, not have all these extra features available in other word processors.

Very clean, very elegant. Thanks for this.

Katie says:

Very cool. Love how you can change the font color and text styles. I’m so glad I don’t have to stare at a stark white background anymore!! Thanks!!

NGloom says:

great work,
why not go on working?

Vicky says:

Awesome program!!

Kids!! House!! Problems!! everything is gone when i open the dark room.

just wanted to leave a thumbs up to you!

(guy on top) funny i was thinking the samething. im not rich maybe later… xDD

Biz says:

I love this program, just one (big) problem: the copy/paste only works sometimes–I get a really annoying error message “An error occurred while cutting/pasting/copying text”…any suggestions? It seems that nobody else on the message board is having this problem

Pro Selling says:

Hi,
Just a quick thank you for a very cool “retro” look piece of kit! It’s particularly good on a sunny day to see what you are typing, if the sun shines on the screen. Doesn’t happen that often in Scotland but I thought I’d leave the tip for those in warmer parts of the world!

Thanks,

Pro

BluE_A... says:

Hi,
Maybe just a hint…
It would be great if there were some shortcuts like Alt + something to get to Greek letters and maybe a shortcut for indexing and footnotes.
Everything else is great!
Btw. I love opacity option…

Thanks!

BluE_A... says:

Also, Ctrl + B, Ctrl + U and Ctrl + I would be nice. Those are basics when writing something.
I don’t want to tell you what to do, just to suggest things that would make your program much better.

Vicente says:

Looks great for writing seriously stuff!
Don’t give up the project. But keep it simple

Kazi Matiur Rahman says:

I just downloaded. I shall try it next day on Window 7 to find out how it works and will make further comments.

ItsMichaelNotMike says:

I write for a living now. Loaded this on to a Windows 7, 64 bit machine. Works great.

Love the graphics options and the simple interface.

This program goes into my writing toolbox.

ItsMichaelNotMike says:

LOL… everyone making suggestions in the program, features that they like. Even more hilarious is them suggesting features like it is something they thought of and you didn’t.

If you did all that, the program would lose its character and become another bloated word processing program unless, of course, you put in only that person’s request.

By the way, can you include presentation features, web page formatting, and the ability to save in Word, WordPerfect, or Rich Text formats (and being able to save in CPM format, from the KayPro machines of 1983, that would be cool too).