Left

It's difficult to focus on writing a document, whether you're trying to get a personal project done, compose an important email or something else, since the web is filled with distractions at every corner.

To avoid these distractions and remain involved in your projects, you can resort to a minimalistic text editor such as Left. This piece of software is specially made for Windows, Linux and Mac users. It puts emphasis on simplicity thanks to the fact that it doesn't contain the usual buttons, menus and extra windows that come bundled with a word processor.

This doesn't mean that Left has no options available. Instead, it highlights only the necessary and sufficient elements that come with a text editor, like opening a document or viewing a word counter.

Following a speedy setup operation, you come face to face with a simple window that has a dark theme and no other graphical elements, not even a right-click menu. You can double-click it to switch to fullscreen mode and start working on your projects.

Commands can be activated via keyboard shortcuts, like opening a file (Ctrl+O), saving changes (Ctrl+S), jumping to the next or previous marker (Ctrl+[, Ctrl+]), as well as increasing or decreasing the font (Ctrl++, Ctrl+-).

You can reset the text size (Ctrl+0), clear or reset text (Ctrl+Shift+N, Ctrl+Shift+Del), as well as enable a speed reader that highlights text while you're reading it by selecting the text and hitting Ctrl+K (ideal for practicing for presentations, for example).

Left has a dictionary of over 12,000 common words that it uses for suggesting synonyms (visible on the bottom side of the window, where a status bar would normally be). When no text is selected, this area reveals statistics with total words (W), lines (L), unique words (V, for vocabulary), and characters (C).

All aspects considered, Left is ideal for users looking for various tricks to help them be more productive and avoid distractions when working with text documents.