WordCraft

WordCraft is a free, open-source word processor modelled on Microsoft Word, made by ArtCraft. Written in Rust, it runs natively on macOS, Windows, Linux and BSD and in a browser through WebAssembly. ArtCraft calls it a clean-room reimplementation of Word, built from public specifications and observation using original or openly licensed assets.

Features

WordCraft has a ribbon interface, styles, tables, track changes, references and mail merge, and reads and writes .docx files. Its spelling dictionary and hyphenation come from Grady Ward's public-domain Moby word lists.

History and availability

WordCraft was first released on 7 October 2026, the first of the Crafting Apps modelled on Microsoft Office programs, and was followed a day later by GridCraft and DeckCraft. It is released under the MIT or Apache-2.0 licence; builds are on its page at getartcraft.com, in the storytold/wordcraft releases on GitHub and through the ArtCraft Launcher.

Reception

Richard Speed of The Register tested it on an Arm-based Surface and found it "worked pretty well", and reported that ArtCraft rated it at 62 percent feature parity and pre-alpha, with DOCX compatibility testing not yet begun and charts, SmartArt and embedded OLE objects dropped. Tom's Hardware described the Office-style apps as a "targeted protest" by Brandon Thomas against subscription software, while noting that most of them were still far from what they set out to replace.