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Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type

enda.sh

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Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type

#1
Hello HN,

I made this simple notepad for writing down whatever comes to mind. The goal is to force you to not get hung up on what you’ve already written. There’s no formatting, you can’t edit what you’ve typed, you can’t select text or move your caret around. There’s no backspace, delete, undo/redo, or paste. You can’t even see any words except the one you’re currently typing, and when you’re done with it, it fades away.

The text is all still there, just invisible. You can save everything you’ve written as a .txt if you want, or just empty your thoughts and let them disappear forever.

The idea was to encourage myself to do more stream-of-consciousness writing. I tend to edit while I write. This forces me to just keep moving forward, and I’ve found it very helpful so far. I was going to build this into my other writing tool, Drift, but I didn’t think it fit with the idea of the project, so I just made it its own thing. I’m calling it Vapor for now.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type
enda.sh

Re: Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type

#5
post #4

Well ... On my Android phone it just types backward in capitals! Like EB OT TON RO EB OT And I had to type that in here because it won't select for copy. Not what I was hoping for!

Aw, sorry to hear that. I remember encountering that bug a while back and was happy when I figured out a way to squash it. Admittedly I tested this app in browsers on Linux, Mac, and on an iPhone, but not Android. So I'll get a hold of an Android device and figure out a way to re-squash the backwards bug. Thanks for the heads up.

Re: Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type

#8
I love the idea, but at least on android the text scrolls backwards as some people have already noticed. Also, my keyboard thinks that wrvy word needs to be capitalized for some reason so I'm typing backwards all caps. And with he no editing, if it was set up in a way that let my phone at least autocorrect my typos, I think that would go a long way to making this more usable.

But kudos for getting something out there, and I'm really excited to get to use it on my laptop where I'm sure it works better.

Re: Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type

#9
I love the idea! It just creates a very minimalistic feeling and helps my mind not get overwhelmed with big chunks of text. However, the no-edits thing is a bit frustrating personally. A solution would be to allow edits as long as the text is visible, plus increase the timeline the text stays in the view (the pace in the homepage is ideal i feel).

Re: Show HN: Vapor – A notepad that fades away as you type

#10
post #7

What’s the reasoning for no backspace? I understand not allowing edits before the current word but I am a very clumsy typer, and this made me pretty frustrated when every other word had a typo.

It may not be for you, then (and I don't think it's for me, either), but that seems consistent with the idea. You're supposed to let go of any kind of editing and just go go go. You can edit it later.
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