An iOS app for writing little notebooks.
Bookhand is an iOS app for writing notebooks: journals, notes, ideas, short stories, poetry, philosophical treatises or anything else you feel like writing.
The idea is that your words live on something like actual paper: your text is typeset onto real pages, the pages curl as you turn them, and each notebook gets its own paper size, margins, fonts and a cover you design yourself.
Coming soon
By default a notebook opens in Page Mode, laid out the way it would be set on printed paper. There’s also a full-screen e‑reader mode with the same page-turning, an outline for jumping to a chapter or section, in-book search and a page grid for finding your place visually.
Edit Mode opens your book in a full-screen, distraction-free editor where you can produce your award-winning novel, a thrilling autobiographical memoir or a truly revolutionary shopping list, whichever the case may be. Paragraphs can be headers, body text or block quotes, and you can add images and control how they sit on the page.
Every notebook can be fully customized: paper size, margins, colors, typefaces, page numbers and a cover with patterns, frames, the little squiggly thing under the title, the little lines around the edge, and lots more things I don’t know the technical terms for. But they are there.
Notebooks are stored locally on your device. This is a simple, free app made by one person: there are no servers and no database, and your text doesn’t go anywhere unless you want it to. You can export to PDF, Markdown, plain text, EPUB or Bookhand’s own format for handing a notebook to someone else.
It’s free and has no ads, in-app purchases, subscriptions, etc. It’s a personal project that I do for fun. No money involved.
I did. I’m not a corporation, I’m just a random human who likes books and writing, so I wanted to make an app where it’s fun to write little books, without ads, AI, plus plans, pro plans, subscriptions, upsell pop-ups or cute little characters that make the app more relatable so you’ll trust it with your billing information. I just want to sit down and write. I imagine you do too, so here we are.