Overview

What is Zen?

Zen : Searchs several text files of

In depth

A closer look at Zen

Zen is cute. Zen is fun. Zen application was developed to be a simple tool that you can put in your computer's Startup folder, or just run it whenever you want. What Zen does is search several text files of "fortune cookie" sayings, and display one at random. The fortune cookie files are just plain text; you can use your favorite text editor application to edit them file to include whatever pithy pearls of wisdom you like. Each message can be as long as you want; the messages are separated with two RETURN characters. A large collection of fortune cookie files is available for download from this site. Zen was inspired by the program "COOKIE," first written in FORTRAN for PDP computers back in the day, and since then ported to almost every computer and operating system on earth. (I myself wrote a version of Cookie for the DECsystem-20 back in 1984, and for the TRS-80 in 1985.) Zen is very simple; on launch, it scans the ZEN.TXT file and chooses one of the entries at random. The "AGAIN" button chooses a different random fortune; the QUIT button quits.

Verdict

Should you download Zen?

Zen runs on Windows 10/11 and is available under the Freeware license — the installer is 451 KB. We’ve catalogued it under Desktop Tools.

Verified clean. Every Zen build on SoftLookup is scanned for viruses, spyware, adware, trojans and backdoors. We re-test on every update.

Zen specifications

Category: Desktop Tools
Publisher: Franklin Veaux
Last updated: May 1, 2026
License: Freeware
Operating system: Windows 10/11
File size: 451 KB
Price: Free
Page views: 499

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What is Zen?

A closer look at Zen

Should you download Zen?

Zen specifications

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