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

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!

enda.sh

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46 points

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dduplex

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3 days ago

29 comments

jasonjmcghee ・ a day ago

Any inspiration from https://enso.sonnet.io?

I'm a big fan of everything Rafał Pastuszak does.

They also recently announced a public beta of a rewrite of that product

https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/new-enso-first-public-beta/

Oh - looks like it's been on HN too. Some good discussions...

New version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44421776

Original: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025073

  • dduplex ・ a day ago

    My initial idea was imagining a typewriter with disappearing ink. Doing some research I came across some apps that use a similar general idea, and Enzo was indeed one of them. But none of them did it exactly like I was picturing, so I decided to make one.

jjj123 ・ a day ago

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.

  • jrowen ・ a day ago

    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.

  • dduplex ・ a day ago

    I’ve found that while trying to write down the ideas in my head, it’s very easy for me to lose my train of thought if I edit while I write, which I can’t seem to help but doing. Not being able to go back at all, or to glance at anything I’ve already written, has helped me keep my inner dialogue moving without interruption. It felt odd at first, but I very quickly got used to not editing myself.

  • inanutshellus ・ a day ago

    Just let go bud. Type with your eyes closed, if that helps.

    Get the idea written down before it gets lost in the "oops, i misspelled that wait... what was I going to say?" trap.

    I find it to be a clever tool for those of us fastidious types that fixate on accuracy and end up failing to complete the larger goal.

caminanteblanco ・ a day ago

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.

  • dduplex ・ a day ago

    Yeah, I apologize for the Android bugs. I’d mostly intended for it to be a desktop app, and tested it on Linux and Mac, then did a couple mobile additions and tested it on iOS. I didn’t expect that Android would behave so much differently, particularly since it’s all in a browser, so that was pretty naive.

    I’ve downloaded Android Studio for testing, so I’ll get to work figuring out where the bug is coming from.

ssawa ・ a day ago

This is so super delightful. I explored a similar space when I was first learning piano and was enjoying how freeing it is to have the melodies and mistakes sort of drift into the air.

In case the work proves useful to your endeavors: https://github.com/cj-dimaggio/transient-words

  • dduplex ・ a day ago

    Oh wow, I hadn’t come across this one while researching. As soon as I looked at it I felt pretty bad thinking someone had already built something exactly like mine 7 years ago. But playing around with it, it seems different enough that I don’t feel like I now need to toss mine in the trash. Phew.

treetalker ・ a day ago

Great name.

I accidentally reloaded the page on my phone, thus losing all my (meaningless, auto-complete generated) text. So maybe an auto-save would be better?

Years ago there was a lightweight app for the then-current version of Mac OS X called Grandview. When invoked, it would fill your screen with a background color and you would see only a huge version of the single word you were currently typing. (I don't remember, but I think it might have displayed the entirety of the last sentence after you ended it too.) It also deactivated your backspace key so you could only keep typing. That was peak focused writing, and it was an awesome app. I miss it, and similar, small apps that did one thing incredibly well.

  • dduplex ・ a day ago

    Thank you for the comment. I’ve thought of adding auto save. I think my initial reason for not including it was that, if you can’t see what you’ve written, how would you know if you’re typing into a new blank doc or a previous auto save? It’s something I’ll think more on.

  • magic_hamster ・ a day ago

    If this was Windows or Linux you could probably keep using it until the heat-death of the universe. One thing Apple does incredibly poorly is supporting their old software. To me it's a form of instability. You just can't trust any long term process on a mac (well, unless you completely forgo updating your OS).

vishrajiv ・ a day ago

This is great! It’s the perfect implementation of stream-of-consciousness journaling, especially when you need to get your emotions out on the page. My college English professor used to recommend putting a towel over your laptop to encourage a flow state when writing. This is easier :) Will bookmark this and try it the next few times when I journal. Great job!

  • dduplex ・ a day ago

    Thanks! I appreciate it.

ap_21 ・ a day ago

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).

  • dduplex ・ a day ago

    Thank you. I don’t think I’ve landed on the fade duration sweet spot yet. I’ll experiment with much longer times and see how it feels.

iamcreasy ・ a day ago

Very cathartic - thank you for building. I’d rather not be able to recover that text at all.

beardyw ・ 3 days ago

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!

  • dduplex ・ 3 days ago

    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.

    • jasonjmcghee ・ 13 hours ago

      There are classes of bugs that reproduce on Android simulator- might be worth downloading Android studio and checking.

slonik ・ 2 days ago

I love this idea. Did you also think about showing the whole line or paragraph instead of just the current word?

zenethian ・ a day ago

I can't seem to enter spaces at all.

cvaambikapur ・ 3 days ago

wow i really liked it can you add wind sound as it fades away?

krthr ・ 3 days ago

I like the idea!

MO-379 ・ a day ago

Would still like to correct mistakes instead of re-writing words again, make the last two or three words editable i guess ? idk... you want to make money ? how ?

very fun idea.