A couple of months ago, we reported on WritingTools, a small open-source app for Windows that offered Apple Intelligence-like features on Microsoft-made operating systems. Fast forward to now, WritingTools has received a big update with new capabilities, a new underlying model, some quality-of-life improvements, and more.
WritingTools v6 is now available on GitHub with the ability to chat about summaries and copy responses as markdown. Chat Mode now has a proper window for conversations (like Copilot or the ChatGPT app) and various quality-of-life improvements, such as start on boot, automatic update checks, a better UI for settings, and multiple optimizations that halved the size of the already tiny application. Also, WritingTools now uses Gemini 2.0 Nano by default (other LLMs are available in settings).
Note that the update has some known issues:
- On some devices, Writing Tools may not work correctly with the default hotkey. To fix it, simply change the hotkey to ctrl+` or ctrl+j and restart Writing Tools. PS: If a hotkey is already in use by a program or background process, Writing Tools may not be able to intercept it. The above hotkeys are usually unused.
- The initial launch of the Writing Tools.exe might take unusually long — this seems to be because AV software extensively scans this new executable before letting it run. Once it launches into the background in RAM, it works instantly as usual.
The developer promises to implement more features and suggestions in future updates, such as the ability to edit buttons and their prompts, create custom buttons, rearrange them, and more.
You can download WritingTools for Windows from GitHub. The app is free and open-source, but using it requires a Gemini API key (the app will show you how to get it during the initial launch) and an active internet connection (it does not work offline, sadly).
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