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35 Comments

We've made the first Twitter writing app

Today we're launching a new thing: Typefully, a distraction-free, write-only editor for Twitter. It lets you write, schedule, and publish tweets and threads in a focused environment.

We've been working heads down on Mailbrew for so long and had almost no time to devote to side projects, but Typefully felt different. We care about this problem a lot, and we decided to spend a few weeks working on it.

✍️ The problem

We've always been avid Twitter users — me and my co-founder @frankdilo met this way — and we've always loved the amount of ideas and insights we read every day on it; but we've also been constantly distracted by Twitter while working, and wish there was a great app to craft quality tweets and threads without getting sucked in the Timeline.

This is also the first product that we've built with @meseali, who recently joined the team and is helping us define our vision, roadmap, and next steps. It's exciting to expand our team and ship our first project together.

💡 The solution

We tried to imagine what could be an amazing writing experience for condensed ideas that our favorite thinkers and creators would enjoy — so we started working on Typefully, a distraction-free write-only interface for Twitter.

We care about mental health, and while our core product Mailbrew helps us tame the firehose of information, and unplug from feeds, we're built Typefully to use Twitter more mindfully (see what we did there?).

✏️ How does it work?

It's simple: Typefully lets you write without distractions, and shows you a live preview of your writing on Twitter.

It's already pretty powerful, and for example, you can publish and schedule tweets and threads with natural language input. After clicking on the schedule button, just write "in 3 hours" or "tomorrow at 4pm" or "on December 6" and we'll take care of it.

You can also press Cmd+Enter to completely hide any interface and go fullscreen, for a 100% focused writing experience.

🍃 What's next

This is just the first version of what can become a powerful tool to craft and publish condensed ideas on the web. Based on feedback and traction we'll define the areas to improve, so we're very excited to know what you think, and see how you will use it.

Try Typefully today, it's free! ✨

  1. 6

    This looks awesome! Thanks for making this.

    One thing––the request OAuth scopes seem a bit daunting. Do you need all these scopes? It might turn some people away if they think access is too broad.

    These are the scopes it's requesting:

    • See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections.
    • See your Twitter profile information and account settings.
    • See accounts you follow, mute, and block.
    • Follow and unfollow accounts for you.
    • Update your profile and account settings.
    • Post and delete Tweets for you, and engage with Tweets posted by others (Like, un-Like, or reply to a Tweet, Retweet, etc.) for you.
    • Create, manage, and delete Lists and collections for you.
    • Mute, block, and report accounts for you.
    • See your email address.

    1. 3

      Thanks! Unfortunately Twitter gives us just Read, or Read + Write access, and we need the latter.

    2. 1

      I was wondering the same thing.. some scopes aren't even relevant like:
      • Create, manage, and delete Lists and collections for you.
      • Mute, block, and report accounts for you.

    3. 1

      It's definitely making me think twice. The scopes requested don't at all match what's in the Privacy Policy.

      And that's disappointing, because I've been wanting this app for several years!

  2. 2

    Adam Wathan was looking for this a few days ago

    1. 1

      That tweet got a lot of likes/replies

  3. 2

    Such a cool product! My feedback is to customize the scrollbars into thinner, more sleek variants. I think that would boost the design significantly.

    1. 1

      Thanks! You can hide them completely via the settings for now

  4. 1

    Hi Fabrizio, wonderful work - in all the tweets of distraction and lost deep work and attention, a very very visually clean and calm interface. I am already hooked 🪝 Reminds me a lot of iaWriter for Twitter 😀

  5. 1

    It's definitely the cleanest app out there. Each and every one of those apps have to cluttered UI and most of them have weird UX. But Typefully is really different in that regard.

    Great job guys!

  6. 1

    Looks great and especially poignant for me as last night I watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix. Social media can be a force for good, and a useful tool, but getting sucked into the timeline can be a time sink, so this sort of platform has a definite use. Nice work.

  7. 1

    Loving it already!

  8. 1

    Super cool! great work y'all 🙌

  9. 1

    I love this so much Fabrizio! Shared in some communities I’m in too.

    It’s so so so beautiful. Congrats 🎉

  10. 1

    You’ve got a winner

  11. 1

    this is just great, I was just looking for a better tool to write threads on Twitter 😍

  12. 1

    This is a nice idea. It feels good to use.

  13. 1

    Congrats! This is super cool! ✨

    I'm already seeing more Twitter threads submitted on ThreadOk 🧵🧵🧵

  14. 1

    This is amazing! I've been wanting something like this for soooo long. My current solution has been to use this Firefox/Chrome extension: https://github.com/jh3y/focussed-twitter

    It's decent, but not perfect. Excited to try out Typefully! Thanks for making it free too 🙏

  15. 1

    Many congratulations on the launch, wish you luck with the app! It's very functional.

  16. 1

    Congratulations Fabrizio, +1 for letting the users try without signup.

    You might be interested in this need gap - A/B test social media posts without posting posted on my problem validation platform as it seems like a natural addition for your editor.

  17. 1

    So very clean. Congrats!

  18. 1

    Looks nice. Also like the way how you formatted this article 👍

  19. 1

    I build a prototype for something similar, which again shows that ideas are nothing 😄. Your execution of Typefully is stellar! :)

  20. 1

    This is so cool! and very much needed too - wow. I hope this blows up to the next level, mate.

  21. 1

    Congrats Fabrizio, You guys have made a product which everyone falls in love at first sight.

  22. 1

    Just when I started to use Twitter you make something like that. Great!

  23. 1

    Your timing couldn't have been better. I've just got back in to Twitter and want to start building in public using Twitter threads – this will be perfect for that. 👌

    I'll give it a go and let you know what I think!

  24. 1

    Absolutely fabulous. Huge fan!!

  25. 1

    Looks really good. Typography is looking good too.

  26. 1

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