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A quiet manual for a quiet room. Search it, or browse by what you’re trying to do.
Getting Started
Wretify is a writing app built for serious non-fiction writers. It gives you a calm, distraction-free space to write books and articles — with an AI thinking partner that helps you sharpen your ideas (not write for you). Your writing is stored as simple files in your own Google Drive, so you always own your work.
When you first open Wretify, press "Continue with Google". This connects your Google account so Wretify can save your writing to your Google Drive. Wretify never sees your Google password — Google handles that.
BYOK stands for "Bring Your Own Key." You connect your own API key from Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini) or DeepSeek, and you pay that company directly at their published prices. Wretify adds no markup and never charges you for AI. Google's Gemini has a free tier that needs no card.
Step-by-step guide: www.wretify.com/blog/how-to-get-and-connect-your-ai-api-key
1. Get a key from the AI company: Google AI Studio (free), Anthropic (Claude) or DeepSeek.
2. In Wretify, press Alt+P to open Settings (or press Alt+K and choose "Settings"). On a phone, open Search and tap the gear.
3. Open "Power Add-ons".
4. In the "Thinking Partner" card, choose Gemini Pro, DeepSeek or Claude.
5. Paste your key and press Save. The card now says "connected".
Your key is saved in your browser and in Wretify/_keys.json in your own Google Drive, so it reaches your other devices.
Where to get each key, step by step: www.wretify.com/blog/how-to-get-and-connect-your-ai-api-key
Power Add-ons, inside Settings (Alt+P), is where you connect your AI keys.
Thinking Partner — choose Claude, DeepSeek or Gemini Pro and paste that provider's key. This is the AI you brainstorm with.
Gemini (Free) — a free Google AI Studio key for the quick jobs: proofreading and quick edits, the hard-fact check, and tagging what you read.
Research Intelligence (OpenAlex) — always on. No key needed.
Your keys are saved in your browser and in Wretify/_keys.json in your own Google Drive. When you use the AI, the key goes with the request through Wretify's server to the provider; Wretify does not log or store it.
AI Setup
Start with the free layer: a Gemini key from Google.
1. Go to aistudio.google.com/apikey and sign in with your Google account.
2. Click "Create API key" and copy it. New keys start with "AQ." (older ones with "AIza"). Wretify accepts both.
3. In Wretify, press Alt+P (on a phone: open Search and tap the gear).
4. Open "Power Add-ons", then the "Gemini (Free)" card, and follow its steps: paste the key and press "Save key".
That switches on the free tools. For a thinking partner to brainstorm with, see the next question.
Full guide, with Claude and DeepSeek too: www.wretify.com/blog/how-to-get-and-connect-your-ai-api-key
You have three choices. Pick one in Settings (Alt+P) → Power Add-ons → Thinking Partner, paste its key, and press Save.
Gemini Pro (Google) — uses a Gemini key from Google AI Studio. If you already added one for the free layer, that same key works.
DeepSeek — needs a balance on your DeepSeek account. Top up at platform.deepseek.com, then create a key on its API keys page.
Claude (Anthropic) — needs prepaid credit. At platform.claude.com: Settings → Billing → "Buy credits", then Settings → API keys → "Create key". Copy it straight away — Anthropic shows it only once.
You can switch between them any time.
Step by step for each: www.wretify.com/blog/how-to-get-and-connect-your-ai-api-key
Start free. A Gemini key from Google AI Studio costs nothing and switches on the quick tools right away.
When you want a thinking partner, try Gemini Pro first with the same key. When you want the sharpest conversation, add Claude. DeepSeek sits in between.
All of them are BYOK — Bring Your Own Key. You pay Google, Anthropic or DeepSeek directly, at their published prices, and set a spending limit with them. Wretify never charges you for AI.
Writing
Press Alt+N, or press Alt+K and choose "New book or article". Pick Book or Article, give it a title (and a topic if you like), and press Create. You can also start one from My Writing (Alt+W): switch to Books or Articles and use "+ New book" / "+ New article" on the Ideas & Drafts shelf. A book holds chapters; an article holds sections.
It's on purpose. Working memory holds about three to four things, so Wretify keeps at most three books and three articles active at once. That's enough variety to stay fresh and few enough to make real progress. When you pause or finish one, move it to Ideas & Drafts or Finished, and another can become active.
On desktop, type / while writing to open a menu of blocks and actions. Keep typing to filter it: /h1, /h2, /h3 for headings, /ul for a bullet list, /ol for a numbered list, /todo for a checklist, /quote, /call for a callout, /table, /link, /foot for a footnote, /hr for a divider. The same menu also opens your Library (/lib), your Notes (/notes) and starts a new book or article (/book, /article). Each row shows its own shortcut.
Focus Mode fades every paragraph except the one you're writing in, so you can stay with one thought at a time. On desktop, toggle it with Alt+F, or open the small grid mark in the top-right corner ("Wretify at a glance") and use its Focus switch. Toggle it again to see the whole page at full strength.
Yes. Wretify saves your words on your device about half a second after you stop typing, then syncs them to Google Drive after 5 seconds of quiet, and again when you switch away. On desktop, the top-left corner of the page tells you where things stand — "Online · Saved just now" — and its dot turns amber if something needs your attention. You never need to press save.
You don't have to memorise any. Press Alt+K (or Ctrl+K) and a search box opens — type where you want to go. Commands that have a shortcut show it on the right, so the box teaches you the faster path while you use it.
Worth knowing: Alt+W your books and articles · Alt+S search inside this chapter · Alt+L read aloud from the cursor · Alt+F Focus · Alt+A the AI partner · Alt+Q Quick Capture · Alt+M dictation · Alt+R reading library · Alt+J journal · Alt+P Settings · Alt+H home · Alt+B back one level. Escape also takes you back out of a room (but never while you're typing).
For text: Ctrl+B bold, Ctrl+I italic, and on desktop type / for the block menu.
Put your browser beside your writing, and drag what you find straight onto the page. On Windows: press Windows+Left with Wretify selected, then Windows+Right with your browser — you'll have both, side by side, in about two seconds. On a Mac: hold the green button in the corner of a window and choose Tile Window to Left of Screen, then pick your browser for the other half. Now select a passage in your browser and drag it into your chapter. It arrives as text on your paper — paragraphs kept, the web's colours and fonts left behind. It works from any browser you already trust, and nothing about it passes through us.
No, and it isn't coming. You already have a browser you know and trust, with your logins, your bookmarks and your ad blocker in it — asking you to give that up for a worse one inside a writing app would be a strange trade. What we care about is the other half: that what you find comes back onto your page cleanly, and that stepping out doesn't cost you the sentence you were in the middle of. So put your own browser beside Wretify (see above), and let us look after the writing.
That's Wretify noticing you came back. When you step away from the writing for more than ten minutes and return, one quiet line appears at the bottom: how long you were gone, that your chapter stayed open, and the last words you wrote before you left. Those last words are the point — the hard part of being interrupted isn't leaving, it's finding your way back into the sentence. It has nothing to click, it disappears the moment you type, and nothing about it is recorded, counted or sent anywhere. It's a fact and a thread back in — never a scold about being distracted.
Reading
Reading mode is Wretify's reading room. Press Alt+R (on a phone, tap the leaf and choose Reading) to open your Reading Library: books and articles you've imported, plus your own books and articles. The interface fades away while you read. Select a passage to Discuss, Explain, Practice, add a Note, or Mulch it into your Compost. Your reading and your writing live in the same place, so what you read can go straight to a chapter.
Select text while reading and these appear (with Note and Mulch beside them). Each opens a conversation with your AI partner about that passage:
Discuss — the AI asks what's on your mind about it, and you explore it together.
Explain — the AI breaks down what the passage means. Useful for dense writing.
Practice — the AI asks how the idea lands in your own life: where do you see it playing out? It moves you from understanding something to using it.
They turn reading into thinking. They need a connected thinking partner.
On desktop, use the controls at the bottom of the page: ← ▶ →. Press play to listen from where you are; the arrows skip back or forward about three sentences. On a phone, tap the play icon at the top, under the chapter title. A soft highlight follows the words being spoken. The voice is your browser's or phone's built-in text-to-speech, free and with no setup.
Your journal is one room for reading and writing alike. Open it with Alt+J on desktop, or Journal in the leaf menu on your phone. Each entry is saved as its own plain Markdown file in Wretify/Journal/ in your Google Drive — yours forever. While reading on your phone, tap "Notes" at the top right to see everything you've saved from your books: discussions, explanations, practices and notes.
Tap the leaf in the bottom-right corner and choose Brainstorm. When you're done, the Back button in the same bar takes you straight back to your book. You can also select a passage and choose Discuss to take it into a conversation.
Open Settings (Alt+P on desktop; on a phone, open Search and tap the gear) and find "Reading appearance". Choose a theme — Light, Vintage (warm cream) or Dark — a reading feel — Classic (Lora serif), Clean (Inter sans-serif) or Warm (Merriweather serif) — and a text size with A− and A+. Your choices are remembered. On desktop, text size also follows the Text Size control in the top-right panel.
AI Thinking Partner
The AI lives in a sidebar that slides in from the right (Alt+A on desktop). Once you've connected a thinking partner in Settings → Power Add-ons, you can ask it anything about your writing — brainstorm, test an argument, get feedback on structure. It reads the chapter you have open and relevant passages from your own earlier writing. Think of it as a thoughtful colleague across the table.
Wretify's AI is a thinking partner, not a ghostwriter. In the sidebar it asks questions, finds the weak spot in an argument, and brings you your own earlier writing and real research. It never edits your manuscript by itself: there are no "write it for me" buttons, and nothing reaches the page unless you press Replace or Insert, or drag it there yourself.
About you is a text file stored in your Google Drive (_my-wretify-ai.md) where you tell your AI writing companion who you are, what you're writing, and how you like to be spoken to. You can edit it in Preferences (Alt P), under AI Brain. For example: "I'm writing a book on burnout for nurses. I value directness. Challenge my assumptions." The companion reads it before every conversation and adapts to it — it adds to the companion, it never replaces it.
One test, three seconds: ask the AI to quote the first sentence on your page back to you, word for word.
If it gives you your exact words and punctuation, it's reading your page and you can trust the conversation. If it paraphrases, dodges, invents something, or says the page is empty when it clearly isn't, it isn't reading your page — don't trust that conversation.
Why it matters: when an AI lacks information, it tends to produce something plausible rather than say "I don't know." Wretify sends your open chapter with every message and tells the AI to say so plainly when the page is empty, rather than review writing that isn't there. While a chapter is still arriving from Drive, the sidebar shows "Loading … from Drive" above the input and waits before sending.
If the AI fails the quote test on a chapter that clearly has text, that's a bug — please tell us.
The Heartbeat is a small dot at the top of the AI sidebar that tells you honestly when a conversation is getting too long.
Green — "Fresh" (under 60 messages, yours and the AI's together). Go deep.
Yellow — "Getting heavy" (60 or more). Save anything that matters — to a chapter, a Bookmark or Quick Capture — before it scrolls away.
Red — "Start fresh" (120 or more). The conversation is full; click the dot, or the Start fresh button that replaces the input, to begin a new one. You can choose to carry a short summary forward.
Why? AI answers get worse as a conversation grows long: the model loses the thread, repeats itself, drifts. Wretify would rather tell you than pretend otherwise.
Starting fresh doesn't lose your work. The old conversation is saved to Past Insights for that chapter, and your About you, your writing and the open chapter are all read again as usual. Only the running thread starts over.
Research Intelligence lets you search about 250 million academic papers (through OpenAlex) from the AI sidebar while you write. Ask a research question and your thinking partner clarifies what you need, searches, and gives you a two-sided summary: what the research agrees on, and what challenges it, with citations like (Author, 2024) and the sources listed underneath. Research you save goes into a library in your own Google Drive, and Wretify checks that library first before searching OpenAlex.
The paper search itself needs no key or account — OpenAlex is free. It runs through your thinking partner, so connect Claude, DeepSeek or Gemini Pro in Settings (Alt+P) → Power Add-ons first. Then ask a research question in the AI sidebar, like "Is there research on identity-based behaviour change?", and it will search about 250 million academic papers and give you a summary with citations.
Citations in Wretify are real footnotes. When the AI finds research, its answer cites each claim inline and lists the sources underneath. Drag a cited finding from the sidebar onto your page and it arrives with its footnote attached. You can also add one from a fact check or a definition. Each chapter builds its own References list from those footnotes, numbered in the order they appear, so if you move a paragraph, its citation moves with it. Word and Markdown book exports add a full bibliography. Wretify never invents a source.
You choose: Claude (by Anthropic), DeepSeek, or Gemini Pro (by Google). Pick one in Settings → Power Add-ons → Thinking Partner, where the card labels them Gemini Pro "Good", DeepSeek "Great" and Claude "The best". You can switch any time.
With a free Gemini key from Google AI Studio, these run at no cost: proofreading and quick edits in the Inline AI bar, the hard-fact check, and auto-tagging what you read. Dictation (Alt+M) needs no key at all — it uses your browser's own speech recognition.
The thinking partner (the sidebar and brainstorming) needs Claude, DeepSeek or Gemini Pro, because a real conversation needs a model that can hold nuance and follow your thinking across turns. Flash is a brilliant surgical tool. But it's not a thinking partner — and we'd rather not offer that experience than offer a bad one.
Tips
Ask for one thing at a time. Instead of "review the whole chapter and fix everything," try "let's look at the opening section — where does it lose momentum?" The AI gives sharper answers when it can focus on one piece of your thinking. Treat it like a real conversation: give it a thought, let it respond, build on that. The back-and-forth is the point.
If you ask for something very large in one go — like feedback on a whole book's structure and every chapter at once — the request can take longer than it's allowed and time out. You'll see: "That request took too long. Try asking for one thing at a time." It isn't a bug; long requests have a time limit. Break the ask into pieces — one section, one question — and you'll usually get better answers too.
Watch the Heartbeat dot at the top of the sidebar. Green means the AI is sharp and focused. Yellow means the conversation is getting heavy — save anything valuable. Red means it's time to start fresh. But here's the deeper truth: even before the dot turns yellow, if the AI's responses start feeling generic or repetitive, start a new conversation. It's not losing your work — it's giving your thinking partner a clean slate. Your persona, your own writing, and your chapter all reload automatically. The only thing that resets is the conversation thread itself.
Yes — and you can check it in three seconds. Ask the AI to quote the first sentence of your page back to you, word for word. If it gets your exact words and punctuation, it's reading your page. If you see "Loading … from Drive" above the input, the chapter is still arriving; Wretify holds your message and sends it once the text lands.
The AI is at its best when you bring it a specific thought and ask it to push on that thought. Instead of "What should I write about?" try "I'm working on the idea that lifestyle is the only thing you can maintain without willpower. Where is this argument weakest?" Instead of "Fix this paragraph" try "This paragraph feels flat. What's missing?" The more specific your question, the more specific — and useful — the answer. The AI reads your chapter, your persona, and your own writing. Give it something real to work with and it will meet you there.
Not by itself. Nothing reaches your page unless you put it there. From the sidebar you drag what you want onto the page; when you search your own earlier writing, those passages have an "Insert at cursor" button. In the inline bar (select some text, or press space on an empty line) you can run a Grammar or Proofread pass or ask for something specific, and the result is only applied when you press Replace or Insert.
Because every other AI tool pretends the limits don't exist — and then you feel the degradation without understanding why. The responses get flatter, the suggestions less surprising, and you start blaming yourself or the tool. We'd rather tell you the truth. Conversations have natural limits. Complex tasks need to be broken into pieces. The AI is sharpest when it's focused on one thing. These aren't flaws — they're the physics of how AI works. A car manual doesn't pretend you never need to change the oil. It tells you when and how, so you can keep driving well.
Listen
It uses the voices your browser already has, and Wretify picks the best one it finds. In Microsoft Edge that means Microsoft's natural-sounding voices; in Chrome, Google's voices. There's nothing to set up, no API key and no cost from Wretify. Quality depends on your browser and system — Edge's natural voices are the strongest of the free options.
On desktop, put your cursor where you want to start and press Alt+L, or click the small play button at the top centre of the page. Your writing is read aloud from there. Press Alt+L again to pause; press it again to resume — or, if you've moved the cursor, it starts from the new spot. A soft highlight follows the sentence being read.
Yes. At the top centre of the writing page, click the small arrow next to the play button to open the voice list. In Microsoft Edge you'll see a short list of natural-sounding voices (such as Andrew, Brian, Emma); in Chrome, Google's English voices. Your choice is remembered and used for your writing, AI responses and reading.
On your phone, tap the play icon — on each AI reply in Brainstorm, and at the top of the page when you're reading. The voice comes from your phone's built-in text-to-speech. On Android you can get more natural voices in Settings → System → Text-to-speech by choosing Google's or Samsung's speech engine; Wretify uses whatever you set there.
Yes. Every AI response in the desktop sidebar has a subtle Listen control below it. Click it to hear that specific response read aloud. It uses the same voice you've selected in the voice picker — the same natural-sounding voice across everything in Wretify.
Yes. Listening uses the text-to-speech built into your browser, so Wretify charges nothing and needs no key. Depending on your browser, the voice may be played on your device or provided online by the browser's maker (Microsoft in Edge, Google in Chrome) — at no cost to you either way.
Dictation
On desktop, press Alt+M and speak. Your words are typed at the cursor exactly as you said them — nothing is polished, corrected or continued, and no API key is needed. To send a spoken thought to a chapter's notes instead of the page, press Alt+Q for Quick Capture and tap its microphone. On a phone, use your keyboard's own microphone: it shows each word as you say it and lets you fix a sentence while you're still talking.
No. Both microphones are literal. There was a mode that turned spoken thinking into polished prose — Neural Voice — and it was retired in August 2026. The words you speak are the words that land. The only choice left is where they land: on the page, or in a filed note.
Mobile
Your phone carries the same books and articles. Tap the leaf in the bottom-right corner to move between Writing, Reading, Journal, Brainstorm and Search; press and hold it to start something new. You can write and edit chapters, read and highlight, keep your journal, and brainstorm with your AI partner, then send the result to a chapter. On mobile the AI never changes your page. To dictate, use your keyboard's microphone.
Type your idea — or speak it with your phone keyboard's microphone. Your AI partner reflects your thinking back and asks a question to push it further. Go back and forth as many rounds as you like; it keeps the whole conversation in view. When something's worth keeping, send it to one of your chapters.
Tap the + at the bottom of the screen and choose "Send to my writing". A drawer shows your active books and articles; tap one, then the chapter where this idea belongs. The conversation is saved there as an idea note straight away.
Tap the speech-bubble icon in the top-right corner to open Brainstorming Sessions — your recent sessions, grouped by time (Today, Yesterday, Last Week, 30 Days Ago). Tap any session to continue where you left off — the AI remembers everything from that conversation. Sessions are saved automatically when you start a new one.
Your Data
Everything is stored in your own Google Drive, in a folder called "Wretify." Each book is a folder containing simple Markdown files — one per chapter. These are plain text files that any text editor can open. If Wretify disappeared tomorrow, your files would still be there, perfectly organized and readable.
Wretify syncs your writing to Google Drive automatically after 5 seconds of quiet, and again when you switch away from the app. On desktop, the top-left corner shows "Online · Saved just now" (or how long ago). Only what changed is uploaded, not your whole library.
On desktop, press Alt+K and choose "Share & Export", then "Back up all" at the bottom. This downloads a JSON file of your library as this device holds it — an extra safety net. Your Google Drive folder remains the complete copy of your writing.
In the same Share & Export panel (Alt+K → "Share & Export"), press "Restore" and choose your backup file. After you confirm, it replaces ALL your current data with the backup, so use it carefully — back up what you have now first if you're unsure.
Nothing happens to your writing. It's all in your Google Drive as plain Markdown files. You can open them in any text editor, in Obsidian, in VS Code, or anywhere that reads text. We provide the tools; you own the files. No lock-in, no ransom, ever.
Import
Liberation is how you bring your writing home from other apps. If you have pages in Notion, Liberation scans them, converts them into clean Markdown files, heals all the internal links, and saves everything to your Google Drive. Your original Notion pages stay untouched — we're making copies, not moving anything.
Press Alt+P and choose Notion under "Bring Your Writing Home" (or press Alt+K and type "import"). Create an integration at notion.so/my-integrations, share your pages with it, then paste the integration token and the root page URL into Wretify. Press "Start Safety Scan" first — it checks everything before importing. When you're happy with the scan, press "Liberate My Writing."
The full walkthrough: www.wretify.com/blog/getting-your-writing-out-of-notion
Right now, Liberation supports Notion. It follows a safe pattern: scan first, then import — so you see exactly what will move before anything moves.
Export
Press Alt+K and choose "Share & Export" (or open Settings with Alt+P). Choose what to export — this chapter or section, or the whole book or article — and the format: Markdown (.md) or Word (.docx) for either, PDF for a single chapter or section, and EPUB for a whole book.
Markdown (plain text you can open anywhere), Word (for editors and collaborators), PDF (for a single chapter or section) and EPUB (for a whole book, for e-readers). Word and Markdown book exports also include a bibliography built from your footnotes.
Library
Open My Writing (Alt+W) and switch between Books and Articles. Each item sits on one of three shelves: Active (what you're writing now — at most 3 books and 3 articles), Ideas & Drafts (early work), or Finished. My Writing always opens on your Active work; the other shelves are one tap away in its filter menu.
Press Alt+K and choose "Corpus Search" (on a phone, tap Search in the leaf menu). Type at least 2 characters and Wretify searches your books and articles, journal, reading library and highlights, with title matches first. Once you've typed, pills let you narrow to My writing, Reading or Journal. To search inside the chapter you have open, press Alt+S.
Instead of free tags, each book or article can have one topic, chosen from a short fixed list (for example "Habits & Change" or "Meaning & Purpose") when you create it — Wretify suggests one from your title. On the Ideas & Drafts shelf in My Writing, your drafts are grouped by topic, and "Suggest topics" can propose topics for any untagged ones.