Writer's Unlock

A writing machine with one job: get out of your way.

Boots from a USB stick
Nothing to install
Plain .txt and .md files
No internet, ever

Writer's Unlock turns a spare laptop into a dedicated writing tool. You put it on a USB stick, start the laptop from that stick, and a few seconds later you are looking at a clean, full-screen page. There is no desktop, no app to launch, no inbox and no browser. There is nothing on the machine to check.

Your laptop's own hard drive is never touched. Everything you write is saved to the stick as ordinary text and Markdown files, so you can pull it out, plug it into any Mac or PC, and carry on.

The writing screen: your words, a thin status line, and nothing else. This is the whole interface until you ask for more. — **The writing screen**: your words, a thin status line, and nothing else. This is the whole interface until you ask for more.

What you get

Instant on

Straight to the page in seconds. No login, no updates, no setup ritual.

Your files stay yours

Plain .txt and .md on a normal USB drive. Open them anywhere, today or in ten years.

Nothing can interrupt

No network hardware is used at all. Nothing arrives while you write.

Every draft kept

Snapshots as you work, a visual timeline, and a side by side view of what changed.

Four calm themes

Dark, light, green phosphor and amber phosphor, with your own TrueType fonts if you want them.

Close the lid to sleep

Shut the laptop and it saves and sleeps. Open it and your page is exactly where you left it.

How you move around

There are two screens. Focus is the page you write on. The Desk is everything else, and it opens over your writing when you press the Windows key (or Esc on machines that do not send a bare Windows or Command key). Files, history, find and replace, statistics, appearance, system settings and the shortcut list are all pages there, and Tab moves between them.

The Desk: one panel over your writing. Press Tab to move along the tabs, Esc to close it. — **The Desk**: one panel over your writing. Press `Tab` to move along the tabs, `Esc` to close it.

New here? Read Getting started, then take the tour of the writing screen.