I was invited to review the brand new BYOK App and there is a tasty discount for you if you want to give this writing app a go. It’s basically a cross between Scrivener and a Freewrite: distraction-free writing and organisational tools to plot your novel. You can get started with a free version of BYOK App or use all their tools with a paid subscription. Read on for my thoughts on my first look, and for the BYOK App discount code!

Is BYOK App the new Scrivener?

BYOK App leads with being a distraction-free writing tool. Designed to integrate with the BYOK device (see more below), it has a text editor available to use for free. For paid users, you also get:

• Wiki – nested organisation tool, perfect for story elements, lore, and so on.
• Grid – table-style organisation tool.
• Cards – think notecards, can be shuffled around into different orders.
• Outline – think Word’s outline view – high level overview tool.

The app is designed with a clean, distraction-free style that begs you to focus and find your flow state. The text editor has necessary formatting, including headings, dot points, numbered lists, etc.

It has a useful split screen view, too, which makes it really easy to fact-check against your world’s lore while you are writing. By default, opening a second document opens the split screen view, and then subsequent documents will ask which side of the screen you want to view them on. You can drag the middle divider to change the size of each document.

You can export your text documents as rich text, markup, plain text or PDF, making it possible to move drafts into another program if desired.

What is the BYOK device?

The BYOK App is designed to integrate with the BYOK device, which is releasing soon after a successful Kickstarter campaign. What is BYOK? It stands for Bring Your Own Keyboard, and it’s a distracting-free writing tool. About the size of a mobile phone, it’s a screen that you can use for distraction-free writing. It connects to your own preferred keyboard. Hence, Bring Your Own Keyboard.

The premise is that as writers, we HAVE A THING for our keyboards. They have to be just right. The team at BYOK thought finding a distraction-free modern typewriter that ticks all the boxes for every writer is too hard. So, they took the keyboard out of the equation.

The app can be used in a web browser, or with the BYOK device.

Is BYOK a tool like a Freewrite modern typewriter?

So far, as I have started playing with this tool, it reminds me of Scrivener meets Freewrite. Distraction-free drafting, plus the added tools for organising content around the story makes this feel like a web-based version of Scrivener.

It will be interesting to see where the company takes this app, for example, adding export options for the other document types (so far, it’s only the “text” document type that can be exported).

Get BYOK App discount code April 2025

Ready to have a try of the BYOK App yourself?

To get 40% off your annual subscription with BYOK App, use the discount code:

JEMMA40

I would love to hear your thoughts about the app. Send me an email or message me using the buttons here on the site and tell me what you think. Is it something that you would use for plotting your novel or short stories?