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ebakssa
ebakssa

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I built a distraction-free writing app inside a CRT (Tauri 2 + CodeMirror)

#tauri #rust #showdev #productivity

I write a lot of long-form text — novels, essays, journals — and every editor I tried felt like an office tool. Panels, toolbars, sync popups. I wanted the opposite: sit down, screen glows, write.

So I built LofiWriter: a markdown writing app styled like an old CRT monitor.

LofiWriter cycling through its five themes

What it does

  • Markdown editing in a CodeMirror editor, wrapped in a curved-glass CRT frame with scanlines
  • Five themes: Green Terminal, Amber, DOS Blue, Paper, and Black & Gray
  • A built-in "radio" — a turntable UI playing a 12-track lofi soundtrack I originally made for another project
  • UI in English and Korean
  • Manuscripts stored as plain local files — no account, no cloud

The stack

  • Tauri 2 for the shell — the whole installer stays small, and the same build ships to macOS and Windows
  • CodeMirror for editing — reliable, hackable, and easy to theme per-theme with CSS variables
  • The CRT itself is pure CSS: layered gradients for scanlines, a subtle barrel curve on the bezel, and phosphor-glow text shadows. The monitoring preset drives how strong the effect is, so it can be dialed from "subtle" to "1987"

Two things that bit me along the way:

  1. Preset-driven styling. The CRT look is controlled by a monitoring preset (bezel width, scanline strength, glass curve). Early on I hand-tuned the window once and silently lost the preset — the app still "worked" but the CRT was just… a rectangle. Now the preset is the single source of truth for the effect.
  2. macOS signing. Getting the build Developer ID signed and notarized so Gatekeeper lets it through took longer than any single feature. Worth it — "your app is damaged" is not the first impression you want. (Windows is still unsigned, so SmartScreen warns. That's next.)

Try it

The free demo is on itch.io — one manuscript, but every theme and the radio are included, so you can tell in five minutes whether writing inside a CRT is your thing or a gimmick:

https://ebakssa.itch.io/lofiwriter

Full version is $12.99, and it's currently in review for the Mac App Store.

If you write long-form, I'd honestly like to know: does an environment like this help you focus, or does the effect wear off after an hour? That answer decides where I take it next.

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