Project

Paperwrist — read on your wrist

Your notes, Markdown, and PDFs on your watch — offline, private, pay once. Pick a file on your phone, read it on your wrist.

Paperwrist is a watch-first file viewer. Pick a Markdown, plain-text, or PDF file on your phone, and read it on your wrist — hands-free, glance by glance, fully offline. No cloud, no account, no subscription.

The Paperwrist app icon: a sheet of paper curved to sit on a wrist.

Paperwrist is a work in progress. I’m building it in the open. The full details and the latest updates live at paperwrist.app — check back here in a few weeks to see how it’s coming along.

Testers wanted — this is where you come in

Early testers are the one thing I really need help with right now. There’s just one catch: you need a smartwatch. If you have an Apple Watch or a Wear OS (Android) watch, I’d genuinely love your help — you’ll get the app early, and your feedback will shape the release.

Check out how to join the early testers phase here: https://paperwrist.app/testers/

Both platforms are welcoming testers right now, ahead of a public release.

Why I built it

I kept wanting to glance at a few lines of text without digging my phone out of a pocket — a pacing plan mid-run, the next few cue cards before stepping on stage, a checklist with my hands full. The watch is already on my wrist and always on. Nothing did this simply, so I made Paperwrist.

The design principles are the same ones I hold myself to on every app:

  • Minimal UI. One job, done calmly. Pick a file, read it.
  • I don’t want your data. No account, no cloud of mine, no tracking. Files travel directly between your phone and your watch and stop there. If you want to pull from a cloud, it’s your cloud, connected by you, on your terms.
  • No dark patterns. Free to try with a real, full-quality file. One optional one-time purchase unlocks unlimited files. No subscription, no ads, ever.

How it works

  1. Pick a file on your phone through the system file picker.
  2. Sync to your watch — plain text and Markdown go as-is; PDFs are rendered on the phone into crisp page images your watch can display, then synced directly to the watch.
  3. Read on your wrist, offline, anywhere — no signal needed.

And when the original file changes, Paperwrist notices and prompts you to re-sync, so what’s on your wrist stays up to date.

See it in action

Pick and manage files on the phone; read them on the watch. Tap any screenshot to enlarge it.

iPhone & Apple Watch

iPhone — every file on your watch, on its own card
Apple Watch — your files, ready to read
…and Markdown rendered properly, on the wrist

Android phone & Wear OS

Android phone — the same, on your device
Wear OS — your files, ready to read

What people use it for

Paperwrist earns its place any time your phone is in the way but you still need a few words in front of you:

  • The Obsidian (and Markdown) vault use case. Send a note straight from your Obsidian vault — or any Markdown app — and read it on your wrist with real formatting: headings, lists, emphasis, links, and code. Your knowledge base, glanceable, without unlocking your phone.
  • Your Notion pages, on your wrist. Connect Notion once, then browse or search your pages right inside Paperwrist and tap one to send it to your watch — no exporting, no files to shuffle. Each one goes over as a snapshot taken at that moment, so when the page changes in Notion, just tap it again for a fresh copy.
Cloud Notes — pick a Notion page and send it to the watch
  • Runners & cyclists — pacing plans, route notes, and race-day reminders without breaking stride.
  • Speakers, performers & officiants — cue cards, set lists, and vows, read glance by glance while you stay present with the room.
  • Pilots & field technicians — checklists and SOPs on the wrist when both hands are busy.
  • Warehouse, lab & on-site staff — pick lists and procedures at a glance, no device to fish out.
  • Students & readers — flashcards, lecture notes, or the key pages of a paper, wherever you are.
  • Recipes & instructions — the next step on your wrist while your hands are covered in flour or grease.
  • Accessibility — large, always-there text on a screen that’s already up, with screen-reader and dynamic-type support.

Private by design

There’s no Paperwrist server to send your files to. They travel directly from your phone to your watch over the operating system’s secure device-to-device link, get cached on the watch so you can read offline, and go nowhere else. Nothing is uploaded to me, nothing is collected — the App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected”, every category unchecked.

If you’d rather pull notes from a cloud, that stays entirely your call: connect your Notion account with your own access token, kept on your device, and Paperwrist fetches only the pages you tap. It’s your cloud, not mine — nothing passes through me either way.

Pay once, yours forever

Paperwrist is free to try — one file at a time, every format, full rendering quality, no watermark. When you want to keep more than one file on your watch, a single one-time purchase unlocks unlimited files. No subscription. No trial that auto-charges. No recurring anything.

Spread the word

Do you know someone who’s always reading something on the go?

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