the notebook
What it's like to write in it.
48pages isn't a database with a text box on top. It's a page — one ruled sheet that runs ahead of you, counts the paper you've used, and eventually ends. Here's the feel of it, from the first line to the cover it wears on the shelf.
the page
A ruled sheet, not a form field.
Every line sits on a fixed 30-pixel grid, like real ruled paper — and the paper runs a little ahead of your cursor, so there's always somewhere to go. Markdown is styled by weight and colour, never size, so a heading never blows up the line height and the page stays honest about how much room is left.
A typewriter mode keeps the line you're writing parked in the calm middle of the screen. Headings, bold, lists, checkboxes, #tags — all there, all quiet. You write the way you'd write on the back of an envelope.
the meter
The paper is finite, and you can feel it go.
A meter across the top counts the paper you've used — not your thoughts, the paper — toward forty-eight pages. Acting on a scrap never buys ink back: whatever you roll, file, gather or scratch stays on the page as a scar, so the book fills at the rate you write and always ends. That pressure is the feature. It's what turns "keep everything" into "this matters; this doesn't."
The four verbs & the scar · roll to a task · file to the cabinet · gather by tag · scratch out · and ferry onward when an idea outgrows the page.
the ending
When the 48th page fills, the book ends.
No app does this: 48pages tells you you're done. It shows you a colophon — the days the book was open, how many scraps it held, what you kept and what you let go — and a closing line for the whole volume. Then you shelve it. The finished book goes read-only: a spine you can always open and read from, but never write in again.
And starting the next one isn't a blank reset. You choose its cover.
the covers
Every book earns a face.
A shelved volume isn't a row in a list — it's a cover, chosen when the book starts and sealed when it ends. Two catalogue series to pick from, plus rare special editions that come in as your shelf grows.
Series 01 — solids
Series 02 — patterns
Special editions — they come in as you shelve
Covers are data, not stock art — the same face renders on web, Mac and iOS. Wear and stickers are on the way.
the lock screen
Your current book is the lock screen.
Come back and you're met by the cover of the book you're in — full-bleed, foil 48, its spine name. The sign-in panel only appears when you reach for it. It's the most personal a login screen gets, and it never leaves your device: the cover is cached in the clear, everything you wrote stays sealed.
Everything you write is end-to-end encrypted on your device before it syncs. I store ciphertext I can't read — not a promise, an architecture. See how →