A typewriter-style writing app for macOS and Windows. The cursor follows a carriage. The page has texture. Backspace can be turned off. For writers who believe the act of writing matters as much as what gets written.
Lettera is a desktop writing application that brings the feel of a typewriter to your computer — not as a novelty or a retro gimmick, but as a serious tool for writers who sit down every day and do the work. It is named after the Olivetti Lettera, the portable typewriter used by Joan Didion, Sylvia Plath, and Cormac McCarthy.
As you type, the page moves left. When you press Enter, it snaps back to the starting position — like a carriage return on a real typewriter. Your eyes stay in one place while the text flows past. It gives the act of typing a physical rhythm.
The screen looks and feels like paper. Choose from warm parchment, clean newsprint, soft ivory, and others. The page has grain and warmth — a surface, not a void.
A no-delete writing mode. When enabled, pressing backspace doesn’t erase text — it draws a line through it, the way corrections look on a typewritten page. Your mistakes stay visible. Your momentum doesn’t break. You learn to write forward instead of endlessly editing the same sentence.
Organize long projects into chapters. Navigate between them in a sidebar. Each chapter is a separate section of your manuscript, not a separate file you have to manage in Finder or Explorer.
A calendar of every day you sat down and wrote. Not a word count bar, not a streak notification — just a quiet, visual record of your writing habit over time.
Per-chapter notes. Each chapter has its own Drawer for storing ideas, fragments, and thoughts that don’t belong in the main text yet. Always close, never in the way.
A modern typewriter for people who still believe words deserve weight.
Novelists, essayists, memoirists, poets, screenwriters, and anyone who writes long-form prose on a regular basis. Writers who have tried distraction-free apps and found that a blank screen is its own kind of distraction. Writers who want a dedicated space for drafting that feels different from every other application on their computer. Writers who want their files on their own machine, not in someone else’s cloud.
Writers who need real-time collaboration, cloud sync across devices, mobile writing, or Markdown rendering. Writers who want AI assistance with drafting, rephrasing, or grammar checking. Writers who need a project management tool with corkboards, outliners, and complex compile options — for that, Scrivener is the better choice. Writers who need to publish directly to WordPress or Medium — for that, Ulysses or iA Writer are better choices.
14-day free trial for macOS and Windows. $29 after that, once, forever. No account required.
Lettera — a quiet place to write.