Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Writefull is a tool that helps improve your writing by comparing your text against databases of correct language like Google Books, Web, Scholar and News. 

The application is free to use but not open source software, and is available for Linux, Windows, Mac, as well as a Chrome extension.


The tool, which is aimed at writers, includes quite a few handy features, like:
  • see how often your text appears in a database and how it's used in context;
  • compare two phrases and see how often they are found in a database and how they are used in context;
  • see which synonyms of a given word are used most often in your selected text;
  • translates text (to English only for now) using Google Translate;
  • define words;
  • find out how the text is pronounced;
  • it uses Natural Language Processing and Google Books, Web, Scholar and News for its databases.

The databases used by Writefull are available online, so you need an Internet connection to use Writefull.

To use Writefull, set the keyboard shortcut in its preferences. Once this is set up, select a chunk of text and use the keyboard shortcut - this brings up the Writefull window and automatically enters the text you've selected, allowing you to perform various operations.

You can also manually enter text in the Writefull window.

The application has an option to launch it automatically at startup, however, this doesn't work properly in Linux. That's because enabling this option, the Writefull window is displayed on launch, and this is probably not the desired behavior for most (I'm not sure if this is how it works across the other platforms).

Writefull continues to run after closing its window (so you can activate it using the keyboard shortcut) but I couldn't find a way to launch it hidden at startup.

For more information about using Writefull, type "/help" (without the quotes) in the application:


A user guide is also available HERE.


Download Writefull


Download Writefull (available for Linux - 32bit and 64bit deb, Windows, Mac and Chrome).