Person/Simon Spati/Brain/Distract-Free Typewriter

• Distract-Free Typewriter

  • Summary

    • A running survey of writerDecks: single-purpose writing machines, typically a full mechanical keyboard bolted to an ePaper display and nothing else. No browser, no notifications, no second application to switch into.
    • Späti owns a Micro Journal Rev. 2 and keeps his own build notes at My Distraction-Free Typewriter (Micro Journal).
    • The tension the note keeps circling: focus and productivity are not the same purchase. A typewriter delivers the first without promising the second. Späti's suggestion is that a Neovim setup configured to behave like a typewriter gets past that limit.

  • Devices

    • DIY and open source

      • Micro Journal — Un Kyu Lee. The note traces back to Cassidy Williams' Building the Micro Journal.
      • Foowrite — Ruben Berenguel.
      • Framedeck — cyberdeck built around a Framework mainboard.
      • USB Typewriter — kits for wiring a real typewriter up as a USB keyboard.

    • Commercial

      • Zerowriter Ink — hot-swappable mechanical keyboard, low profile. Un Kyu Lee recommends it over the Android-based options, whose screen timeouts and notifications break the flow the device was bought to protect.
      • Freewrite
      • BYOK
      • AlphaSmart — the 1990s classroom ancestor of the whole category.
      • MNT Pocket Reform

    • Repurposed ePaper tablets

      • Boox Palma — phone-sized, 6 GB RAM, ships with the Play Store, so Obsidian installs directly and runs in Vim mode. Typing experience walkthrough.
      • Boox Note Air2 — 10.3" for something closer to a page.
      • reMarkable 2
      • Daylight DC-1

  • Links

    • writerDeck.org and its list of DIY writerDecks
    • r/writerDeck
    • I Tried 7 Distraction-Free Writing Devices (Here's What Actually Matters)