Show HN: Nowrite.fun – If you stop typing, your text disappears

23 pointsposted 9 months ago
by vseplet

20 Comments

layman51

9 months ago

I haven’t tried it yet but it is an interesting idea for an app. My initial thoughts are: if I have something that seems to be important or significant that I wrote down near the start of my note, I would probably type gibberish or nonsense if I wanted to prevent it from being erased. Is there some way to ameliorate this situation where I would end up padding the note with fluff? My guess is to just make the timer shorter. Or maybe have some “checkpoint” for a longer timer.

Also, when it comes to handwriting, is there a way to support this input? I’ll say that a lot of left-handed writers have the opposite issue when writing with ink on paper. If they write too fast, most of them will end up smudging what they just wrote. This is not an issue on electronic writing devices of course.

freedomben

9 months ago

Same, and I could also see myself compulsively using Ctrl+A Ctrl+C to get it on my clipboard just in case. I already do this in webforms (like on HN) because of so many years of losing my text.

I like this idea but I think it would be great if the text went into a recycle bin instead of fully gone. At least for me that would still accomplish the desired result, but I wouldn't live in fear of losing some important point because I took too long proofreading or something.

vseplet

9 months ago

Thanks for the feedback, I'll think about how to implement this beautifully in the near future!

nashashmi

9 months ago

Offer a pay service to recover stuff that was lost

vseplet

9 months ago

Do you think this will be fair?

nashashmi

9 months ago

It will remain a form of remediation to lost work. OTOH you will end up keeping lots of works of garbage value with no end date. That could be unfair.

vseplet

9 months ago

Maybe I didn't understand you, but on the sides of the timer there are buttons + and -, you can choose a time convenient for you

skeptrune

9 months ago

Beyond writer's block, this helped me lock in. I often take long thinking pauses and get lost in mental rabbit holes, which wastes time and reduces my productivity.

I would appreciate a version with slightly lower risk. As it stands, I don't think I could use this current version for anything beyond your intended use case of short, paragraph-long blurbs.

vseplet

9 months ago

Thank you very much for the feedback! I think that all people are different and the time of going into darkness should be adjustable

votick

9 months ago

I can’t use it on mobile looks like which is annoying as we’ve had touch screen phones for almost 20yrs now, the good thing is at least I care enough im annoyed I can’t use it. I’d imagine you’ll get a lot more sharing if mobile works

vseplet

9 months ago

I will definitely support mobile today/tomorrow but I am sure it is almost useless for mobile phones

xtiansimon

9 months ago

I imagined this as a multiplayer writing experience.

vseplet

9 months ago

How do you think this should work?

xtiansimon

9 months ago

I guess I actually imagined how it wouldn’t work. Which is to say, if you know a text disappears when some stops typing, then the text takes on a life (and death) of its own.

vseplet

9 months ago

I’ve increased the time before failure — now writing will be a bit easier, and losing a bit harder.

Huge thanks for all your feedback!

purplecats

9 months ago

kind of off putting to have to wait and go through all the dialogue screens when you just want to start typing

vseplet

9 months ago

Yes, we need to do a quick restart!