Professional project
Python code solution and explanation
Tkinter GUI

Introduction

A common issue for writers is writer’s block, which is the inability to come up with ideas or put them into words. One solution to this is using The Most Dangerous Writing App, an online text editor that deletes all progress if the user stops writing for 5 seconds, as indicated by a countdown timer.

You might have come across an online disappearing text writing app, but today we’re going to make one using python, so you can use it for productivity!

Step breakdown

Let’s break this program down into smaller steps.

1. Make the screen
2. Display all widgets (label, textbox)
3. Check if user has been inactive for 5 seconds
4. Delete all text from the page

Solution

We’re going to import tkinter and add two extra variables we will use later on.

import tkinter as tk

timer = 0
has_written = False

Let’s set up the GUI screen for our program. This will be the window.

window = tk.Tk()
window.title("Disappearing Text Writing App")
window.geometry('600x800')
window.configure(bg="black")

This will be a short description at the top of the page.

intro = "Don't type for 5 seconds, everything gets deleted!"
words_label = tk.Label(window, text=intro, font=('Arial', 14), bg="black", fg="gray")
words_label.pack(padx=10, pady=10)

This will be the textbox in which the user will write. This textbox will have a special function called bind(), where on the press of any key, the check_flag() function will be triggered.

textbox = tk.Text(window, height=40, font=('Arial', 12), bg="black", fg='white')
textbox.bind("<Key>", check_flag)
textbox.pack(padx=20, pady=10)

Finally, we can add window.mainloop() so the code keeps running.

window.mainloop()

Now that we’re done with the GUI window of our program, we can start with the functionality. We already entered a command check_flag().

Need to explain this

def check_flag(_event=None):
    global has_written
    if has_written:
        reset_timer()
    else:
        has_written = True
        countdown()


def countdown():
    global has_written
    if has_written:
        global timer
        timer += 1
        if timer >= 5:
            delete_text()
            has_written = False
        window.after(1000, countdown)
        

def reset_timer():
    global timer
    timer = 0


def delete_text():
    textbox.delete("1.0", "end")
    reset_timer()

final code

To view my full code, please visit my GitHub repository: https://github.com/Gursehaj-Singh/disappearing-text-writing-app

import tkinter as tk

timer = 0
has_written = False


# ---------- FUNCTIONS ---------- #

def check_flag(_event=None):
    global has_written
    if has_written:
        reset_timer()
    else:
        has_written = True
        countdown()


def countdown():
    global has_written
    if has_written:
        global timer
        timer += 1
        if timer >= 5:
            delete_text()
            has_written = False
        window.after(1000, countdown)


def reset_timer():
    global timer
    timer = 0


def delete_text():
    textbox.delete("1.0", "end")
    reset_timer()


# ---------- GUI ---------- #

window = tk.Tk()
window.title("Disappearing Text Writing App")
window.geometry('600x800')
window.configure(bg="black")

intro = "Don't type for 5 seconds, everything gets deleted!"
words_label = tk.Label(window, text=intro, font=('Arial', 14), bg="black", fg="gray")
words_label.pack(padx=10, pady=10)

textbox = tk.Text(window, height=40, font=('Arial', 12), bg="black", fg='white')
textbox.bind("<Key>", check_flag)
textbox.pack(padx=20, pady=10)

window.mainloop()

Example run