ZenWriter
A distraction-free markdown text editor focused on pure writing flow.
CreatorOpen Source
TypeCreator
Year2026
Reach / Impact12k+ GitHub stars
ZENWRITER
zenwriter.org
01 / Overview
The Sandbox
ZenWriter was born out of personal frustration with heavy, complex writing apps. I wanted a space that felt like a clean piece of paper, with subtle typewriting sounds, autocompleting markdown syntax, and simple cloud backup without subscriptions.
02 / The Challenge
Problems Explored
Implementing real-time local draft saving, undo-redo operations, and custom typewriter keyboard sound queues without causing main-thread latency or UI blocking, especially on large markdown documents.
03 / The Solution
How it was built
I built the core editor using Next.js 15, integrating Editor.js for clean block outputs. State is managed via Zustand, keeping operations extremely quick. Custom audio cues are loaded via the Web Audio API to achieve zero latency.
Core Features
- Autosave to local storage and IndexDB
- Typewriter focus mode (highlights current line)
- Web Audio API key sounds
- Direct export to Markdown, PDF, and HTML
Tech Stack
Next.jsEditor.jsZustandTailwind