SolarWriter

Works surprisingly well for a basic typing/journalling. I can now use my 13 year old e-reader as an e-ink monitor for my writing. I can send the notes to myself via email to organize for later. As long as your e-reader has a basic web browser, you’re good to go. Wish the pro version was a little more affordable.

I typed part of this review on my iPhone 13 Pro, and the rest on my apple silicon MacBook Pro, using my Kindle Paperwhite as a secondary display. It works, and allows you to send the finished document to email, text, etc., but there are shortcomings: Unfortunately it's very laggy, at least on my 11th gen Paperwhite. It is easy on the eyes, though! Another issue is that I can’t use the Kindle screen as a touch interface to replace having a mouse. So in IOS, I have to use the on-screen or Bluetooth keyboard to move the cursor, edit text, save the finished file, etc. On the Mac, I was able to use the mouse and keyboard. Highlighting, cut and paste, etc., are not an option either. Emailing anything I create is easy using SolarWriter on the iPhone or Mac, but I don't see a way to do that on the Kindle.

Great app, love this! One thing i urgently need: allow more fonts in the settings tab. Serif and sans-serif are not enough; in particular, I would love to see some monospaced typefaces, such as Consolas.

I mean that affectionately. This app represents a clever way of getting around limitations. There are some convenience factors that I wish were possible, but it’s not the app’s fault that they are not present. Like turning off my phone screen, or syncing documents to cloud storage. I wish the app made it clearer as to where exactly your documents are stored. You can email them to yourself, which is a pretty good way to save your docs elsewhere and continue your work later. I have had a little trouble getting it to work on some networks; I get ERR_ADDRESS_UNREACHABLE on some networks. Might be WiFi security settings.

I had about 500 words in a document and suddenly it deleted all of it. Then it did it again, after I decided to give it another shot. I checked all the files, tried to do cmd + z to undo it. It’s just gone. Suddenly the page will just go blank, and all that work is gone. This is obviously incredibly frustrating to lose work, and now I’m afraid to use it in case it does this again. I thought SolarWriter was better than this.

It would be brilliant if it worked but it isn’t working. I have a kindle voyage, which it explicitly says works…

I’ve got everything set up as described in the help doc, but my kindle can’t load the webpage at the provided IP Address. It gives me an error about the browser “being designed to render simple webpages.” And the big “Upgrade to Pro” takes up so much space. Really in your face, made it hard to give it a real try. If it worked, I’d probably buy it. This solution is really clever and so much cheaper than buying a proper e-ink typing device.

I don’t often leave reviews for software, because much of the mobile software I’ve used in the last 10 years is either overpriced, bloated or short of my expectations. SolarWriter is an awesome piece of software, and I appreciate what it has done for my writing workflow.

It does exactly what it’s supposed to and I appreciate the expanded functionality of my kindle with it. I would love to see a dark mode added or another way to conserve the battery of my iOS device while I’m typing.

I wanted a way to write without distraction but didn’t want to pay for expensive devices like freewrite. This is exactly what I was looking for and very easy to set up. I already had a Kobo e-reader (it works with libre 2) and now I can do some distraction free writing even outdoors! Thanks for the app!