Whenever I write, I love to have rain, thunder or both in the background. Since I can’t control the weather, I utilize YouTube. If you don’t use an Adblocker (and I highly recommend one for whatever browser you prefer), search for videos that are ad-free. Lo-Fi, or Low Fidelity music, has become very popular in the last few years. It’s about the most relaxed music you can find next to ambient or white noise. I will frequently have multiple tabs open playing rain, light thunder and Lo-Fi. That combo is perfect for writing or reading. Many times, I forget the music and rain are even playing.
I write using Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer and prefer to hide the computer’s clock. I’ve found it is a big distraction to check time when writing. I just want to write for the hour or two I have for the day and cut out any distractions whenever possible, which is difficult when you have a rambunctious one year old who’s ready to play!
I know many writers use Google Docs and depend on Google Drive to save their work. For me, it boils down to the habit that I prefer to not only save my work to the hard drive I’m currently using (frequently switching between my work and home computer) but also save backups as attachments to my email account. Paranoia plays a part in that I expect to one day open my writing project in Google Docs and the work has seemingly vanished. Furthermore, my email account is reliant on the cloud so there’s a chance my emails might disappear, although that has never happened in my decades using email accounts. Using Google Docs would be much quicker and maybe someday I’ll make the leap.