Platen Writer

Platen is a 1930s manual portable typewriter, rebuilt for your iPhone. Every keystroke strikes a type-bar through an inked ribbon onto rag paper, rings a bell near the margin, and waits for you to throw the carriage home. It's a place to write slowly: letters, poems, journals, first drafts. Nothing floats, nothing pings, and the page only moves when the machine would move it. A MACHINE, NOT AN APP • Chrome-ringed keys with glass domes, a period four-bank layout, Shift Lock and margin release • The carriage steps on key release; throw the lever or swipe to return, and the paper rolls up a line • A brass margin bell rings six characters before the stop • Backspace erases like any keyboard; strike over a word with x to cross it out INK THAT BEHAVES LIKE INK • Every letter lands a little off the grid, the same way every time — your machine has its own crooked "e" • Strike harder and the ink darkens; a tired ribbon prints grey and broken • Black and red ribbon tracks, or stencil • Paper in bond, laid, onion-skin or ruled ledger MAKE IT YOURS • Five machines: black enamel, Swiss seafoam, matte black office, pop red and royal blue — each with its own keys and desk • Three typefaces: inky pica, clean manuscript Courier and a fine elite TWO WAYS TO TYPE • Purist: manual return, the period layout and the typewriter eraser, just like 1934 • Assist: correction tape, undo and an automatic carriage return, with the same sound and motion FEEL AND SOUND • Layered haptics for every key: the soft start, the bottom-out, the strike, the return • Sound built from separate layers — key, bar, strike, escapement, room — so no two keystrokes are the same ONE SCREEN, THE WHOLE MACHINE On iPhone, the page rises out of the carriage above round glass keys, and the line you're typing is magnified right where each letter strikes. Pull a fresh sheet down onto the platen and turn the knob to feed it; switch to the figures layer for numbers and symbols. PROOF, FILE AND SEND • Mark up pages in pencil, rub ink out with the typewriter eraser, then retype a clean copy • File every document as a typed index card in tabbed folders, and search every page you've typed • Send pages as a PDF, as pictures of the paper, or as plain text — exactly as typed, or as a clean copy BUILT FOR FOLDING IPHONE On a folding iPhone, Platen follows how you hold it. Propped up like a laptop, the paper stands on the raised half and the keys lie on the flat half. Opened flat in landscape, the keys part at the hinge with a space bar for each thumb. Stood on a desk like a book, the whole page sits on one side and the machine on the other; held in both hands, the keys curve around your thumbs. Nothing important sits in the fold. Closed, the outer display shows the machine's carrying case with its luggage tag and settings. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account, no ads, no tracking. Your pages stay on your device. Also works with a hardware keyboard and VoiceOver.