Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta

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

The new Ensō (Occult Vampire Keanu) is available for public testing, focusing on a distraction-free writing experience (MISS philosophy). Key improvements include a simplified UI moved to the application menu bar for easier access, and 5½ accessibility-friendly themes catering to different lighting conditions (including OLED screens). A new "Coffeeshop Mode" conceals text for privacy in public places, toggled with ⌘-C. Text rendering is improved with better typography control and a custom caret. Ensō will be available on the AppStore by default (Gumroad version remains as a backup but won't be maintained). Analytics have been removed, prioritizing user feedback. Personalization and RTL language support are planned for future updates. Ideas being considered include Windows/Linux support, Quick Save (time-stamped snapshots), and a "Toybox" menu with experimental writing tools. The developer emphasizes a slow, careful approach to development, prioritizing quality and user comfort.

The Hacker News thread discusses Ensō, a writing tool designed to promote flow by separating writing from editing. Users praise its "coffee shop mode" and the core concept of distraction-free writing. Some request features like font and cursor customization (especially a fixed-width font for developers), while others suggest a Linux version. Discussion also revolves around Ensō's resemblance to similar tools like Apostrophe and The Most Dangerous Writing App, highlighting the spectrum from calming to anxiety-inducing writing environments. The author, rpastuszak, actively engages, noting feedback and explaining design choices, including omitting analytics for privacy. Some initial confusion about the product's purpose is addressed with an updated description. The thread touches on the value of brain-dumping and free writing, while others seek tools to structure their writing. The website's playful design is both appreciated and criticized for its lack of initial clarity. Multiple users mistakenly thought Ensō was related to other tech products using the same name. The author plans to improve the product page with more user-centric descriptions.

原文

Hi there,

Look!

The new version of Ensō (codename: Occult Vampire Keanu) is available for public testing!

Download it here

This is a temporary icon I used for testing. I am considering creating a simplified version of it. PS. here's the original image (on potato.horse, of course)

MISS, my focus is on removing distractions over adding new features. This can be surprisingly challenging (e.g. how do I tell users about feature X or Y without breaking their flow?) but also gives me time to focus on polishing the app.

(we will discuss these in more detail in future posts)

MISS philosophy.

Most of the UI has been moved to the application menu bar for easier discoverability and shortcut access. So far no one has missed the old inline UI, but you can read more about it towards the end of this note.

writing in extremely low light conditions, with reduced light exposure (See Midnight, Obsidian for Vampires)
- designed for OLED screens
- the main use case here is writing at night, to put myself to sleep.

5½ and not 6 because one theme still needs some work. Is there a specific use case or theme you'd like to see in Ensō? Let me know!

Sketch - Ensō Coffeeshop Mode).

The new text rendering engine allows for better control over typography settings, supports alternative display modes like Coffeeshop, and uses a custom caret.

I don't know how to describe it objectively (and I obviously lack the distance to) but writing in the new UI feels different, more fluid. The text is easy to read, but also somewhat softer (though not blurry).

Less is more, so why do I care about it? Because less is more. I want Ensō to feel familiar and high-quality, like a good Moleskine notebook. I want people to feel comfortable paying $10 for a typing app without text selection. I want them to enjoy it as much as I do. Fewer features allow me to focus more on what is there.

skip the AppStore and use Gumroad, plus what I learned from that are beyond the scope of this note (you can click the link to request that particular write-up).

Why?

several users complained that Gumroad payment looked, for the lack of a better word, shady, especially at the step with a PayPal payment screen. The ones who messaged me still bought the app, but I imagine there were many who turned back.
AppStore with all its flaws makes delivering apps... slow and annoying, but also relatively easy without much code.
I can add OTA updates and re-publish Ensō via Gumroad later, which makes sense as an iterative improvement.

The Gumroad version of Ensō will stay as a backup, but will not be maintained.

I've been using Ensō daily for 6 years. I've also received a ton of high-quality feedback, not via analytics but from users who were kind enough to reach out to me. I like to think that I have a fairly good idea of how and why people use Ensō.

The previous version of Ensō would pass an anonymous impression event on load. Now, by design, no network traffic is made at all. Here's our new Privacy Page.

source)

This one will be included in the next test build. Many Ensō users speak languages written in non-Latin alphabets (to my knowledge, mainly Persian, Arabic and Hebrew).

It makes me both grateful and somewhat sad that one (non-techie) user went as far as even sharing a code sample with me when asking for fixing the issue. Adding rudimentary RTL support can be as simple as a one-line change in your code. Even if it's not perfect - it's still a huge improvement that your non-Latin script users will notice, believe me.

ease of use, reducing distractions
1. Kind software)
discoverability
familiarity

There's tension between 1. and 2. as every new feature implies more choices on the user's part; every new choice is an opportunity for distraction. This might seem pedantic, but small, seemingly insignificant changes do add up.

Removing things is harder than adding them (see 3.). Perhaps that's why commits with negative LoC count feel so good.

Prepare basic marketing materials
- Sit.) but what I call marketing is mostly talking about Ensō and related subjects here, plus engaging with communities I already know, such as forums
Add RTL writing support
Launch

let me know.
Quick Save - hitting ⌘+S would automatically save a snapshot of your notes to a predefined directory with a time-stamped file name, e.g. note-27-06-2025.txt
Toybox - an optional menu feature with experimental tools released episodically, such as:
- writing prompts
- writing timer
- visual experiments (e.g. different typography styles or letters and words turning into vines that grow as you type)

If Toybox becomes a reality, it'll be buried in the menus to avoid distractions and will act mainly as my platform for experimentation and play with users. If there's a chance it might introduce more distractions - it'll become a separate app. (Kind software)

My Recent Art Exhibition - working on different things simultaneously, focussing on their interplay rather than looking at each feature in isolation.

While I believe you should Share your unfinished, scrappy work, I know Ensō well enough that I can allow myself more flexibility. This style of work gives me a lot of joy and the end results have so far been better than expected.

The new Ensō is not the type of project I can share in small unfinished bits, feature by feature. I will repeat this ad nauseam: I want to give you something that will get out of your way but also feel beautiful, polished, yours.

This is akin to good typography or UX - when it's there, you don't notice it, but at a subconscious level, you feel more comfortable with the tool and want to spend more time using it. That has been my experience so far.

Tauri is much more mature than when I released the first macOS version of Ensō. I spent weeks getting the previous version to build properly on Mac with notarisation, provisioning profiles and undocumented AppStore Connect APIs. Now, most of the things just work (sometimes with a bit of scripting, which is where Claude Code turned out to be indispensable).

Brief History of Galician Carpentry) and Ensō happens to be made of stuff that can be worked in a carpentry-like manner. The small feature set means I can afford to take time to work on this with enough care, which I hope shows in the final product.

Building a theme switcher can be a weirdly complex problem (if you complicate it well enough). The difficult part was letting users set themes for dark/light/sync with OS mode, with previews, making it obvious when changes are saved, all in a single piece of UI, with max 2-3 clicks.

Most of my attempts at this resulted in something that looks more than the Dwarf Fortress GUI than a simple theme picker. I understand now why almost no one is doing this and why the few who do split the UI in several steps.

I'm still happy with using a browser as the text rendering engine. Especially with Safari, the amount of control over typography is just excellent (e.g. text-box: cap alphabetic).

I wish there was an easy way of getting the native accent colour from the OS, but that's not possible at the moment. accent can be customised, but not read.

I'm not planning to remove the free web version of Ensō. I want to get paid for my work, but people reach out to me and buy it with virtually no marketing. I'm hopeful, even optimistic that the trust I've earned so far, as well as the quality of the final product, will be enough for it to grow slowly but steadily.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!

Show HN: New Ensō – first public beta

An even more simple, streamlined UI, following the MISS philosophy.

MISS philosophy.