A new version of FocusWriter 1.4.0 was just released yesterday. Quite a lot has changed since in the app since I was previously using 1.3.6 since it was the latest stable release. This version feels like a big step up. The biggest changes in my opinion is that you now have the option to change the line spacing in your themes and that the save dialog won’t force you to either save your document as a .txt or a .rtf file, which is good news if you’re writing in Markdown like I do.

My favorite new feature is the focus mode. The focus mode lets you chose to focus on either one line, three lines or a paragraph by “blurring” out the rest of the text by changing it’s opacity (or something to that effect), which makes it blend in with the background and thus lets you focus on the the current focused text. This feature can also be found in iA Writer, which seems to be a constant inspiration for the development of FocusWriter by the way (I don’t see that as a bad thing though), although the former only lets you focus on one sentence at a time.

There’s also a new function called Scenes, but I doubt I’ll use it that much since I personally don’t need it form my kind of writing. It essentially lets you create markers for different scenes in your document separating them by using a couple of characters. The default detection for a new scene is two hashes (which coincidentally is a second level heading in Markdown). I could see it being handy if I’m writing a really long blog post containing lots of headings though. FocusWriter is first and foremost made for writers, so there’s definitively a use for that type of thing. All in all I still think that FocusWriter is the best writing app I’ve come across.