The tap
One press.
Their phone lights up.
No typing, no read receipt, no pressure to reply. A tap is the smallest possible message — and the whole point is that it costs nothing to send.
Try it here
This is the real animation.
Not a video and not an approximation — the burst above runs the same maths as the app: the same heart path, the same fan angles, the same easing, the same gravity on the tail of the flight.
- It answers instantly. You feel it in your hand the moment you press — the animation never waits to hear back.
- Sent offline and replayed later, carrying the id it was created with — so a tap can never arrive twice.
- Sixty frames a second on a five-year-old phone, because the particles are drawn, not animated views.
- Honors Reduce Motion. The confirmation stays; only the travel goes.
Eight kinds
Each one feels different in the hand.
The difference is not the label — it is what you feel. Eight kinds, distinct enough that after a week you know which one arrived without taking the phone out.
Thinking of you — One pulse. The default, and the one people send most.
Thinking of you, Miss you, Goodnight and Good morning are free. Love you, Hug, Proud of you and Got you come with Emberknot+.
Say more, if you want
Add an emoji, a word,
or a drawing.
All three are optional and all three are attached to the tap rather than sent as a separate message — so it still arrives as one thing, and still needs no reply.
An emoji
Pick one and it rides along with the burst, scattered through the particles instead of pinned in a corner.
A word
Up to a short line. Long enough for “on my way” and deliberately too short to have an argument in.
A drawing
Draw with a finger. Stored as points rather than an image, so the same stroke is sharp at any size — including a watch face.
Moments
A thread, not a chat.
Everything you send lands in one shared timeline — taps, notes, photos, moods, check-ins. There is no unread count, no typing indicator, and no green dot, because none of those things make two people closer.
- No read receipts. Knowing they saw it and did not answer is worse than not knowing.
- No streak pressure. Streaks are shown; nothing is ever taken away for missing one.
- No delivery guilt. A tap sent is a tap done. That is the entire contract.
When it lands
A tap does not arrive
as a notification.
It arrives as weather. A goodnight brings a night sky and a moon; a rough day brings rain and thunder that jolts the card on every strike; being proud of somebody throws gold. It is the loudest thing on the phone for about a second and then it is gone.
Received outranks sent, always — a confirmation of your own tap will never sit on top of one of theirs. And it is never in the way: it retires on its own, and a tap dismisses it.
Goodnight — a night sky, and a moon that rises into it.
A rough day — rain across the top of the screen, and the card jolting with the thunder.
Proud of you — gold, falling and turning.
Send the first one
tonight.
Free on the App Store for iPhone, with Android coming soon. Emberknot+ is optional: three days free for new subscribers, then US$5.99 a month or US$49.99 a year for both of you.
Out now on iPhone
Coming soon on AndroidOn the App Store now for iPhone. Android is coming soon — join the waiting list for one email the day it is on Google Play, and nothing else, ever.