FocusWriter vs ghostwriter

FocusWriter

• Writers who want a full-screen page with nothing else on it
• People who set themselves a daily writing target
• Windows and Linux users who want a free, open-source editor

ghostwriter

• Linux and Windows users who want a free Markdown editor
• Writers who draft first and format later
• Bloggers who need clean HTML from Markdown

FocusWriter

• The download page for the current version lists Linux, Windows 10 x64 and source code only; it offers no macOS build.
• The version archive shows macOS builds only up to a release from April 2020.
• No mobile or web version is listed.

ghostwriter

• macOS support is unofficial and community-provided: there is no installer, so the app has to be compiled from source.
• The Windows download is offered only as a portable 64-bit build for Windows 10.
• No mobile or web version is listed.
• Export to other formats relies on processors such as Pandoc or MultiMarkdown.

FocusWriter

Hide-away interface

Menus, toolbars and other controls stay out of sight until the mouse moves to the edges of the screen, leaving only the text visible while writing.

Themes

A theme controls the font, the colors and a background image, and writers can create their own to set the mood of the writing space.

Statistics and daily goals

Statistics update as you type, and a daily goal tracks progress toward a target for each day's writing.

Sessions that resume

Several documents can be open at once, and on launch the program reloads the work in progress and returns to the last position in it.

Spell-checking

Spelling is checked with the bundled hunspell library, and the project page links to LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice dictionaries.

Portable mode

A portable Windows build is offered, and creating a Data folder beside the program keeps settings and themes with it on a USB drive.

ghostwriter

Live preview

Shows the Markdown document as HTML beside the editor, tuned to stay responsive on large documents. The HTML can be copied into a blog.

Focus Mode

Highlights the text around the cursor and fades the rest. It can be set to highlight the current line, sentence, paragraph or three lines.

Hemingway Mode

Disables the backspace and delete keys so that drafting cannot be interrupted by editing, in the manner of a typewriter.

Outline navigation

A sidebar outline jumps to any section of the document, in the editor and in the live preview, by mouse or with Ctrl+J and the arrow keys.

Document and session statistics

A live word count sits at the bottom of the window, and sidebar tabs show further statistics for the document and the current session.

Export through Markdown processors

Exports to other formats using Pandoc, MultiMarkdown or commonmark, and uses Pandoc to render equations with MathJax.

FocusWriter

• Free$0

  The full word processor for Windows 10 x64 and Linux, including a portable Windows build, with optional tips to the developer.

ghostwriter

• Free$0

  The complete editor at no cost: a portable 64-bit build for Windows 10 and packages for Linux distributions, with source code for other platforms.