HOW IT WORKS

How Open When works

Three steps and no sign-up. You write the letter, you seal it, and they open it when the moment on the envelope comes.

1. Write

Pick a kind of letter. Open When is sealed for a moment ("Open when you can't sleep"). Unsent is for words you will never send. Yourself is a letter to future you. Occasions is a letter instead of a card for a birthday, wedding, new baby, graduation, retirement or sympathy.

Write in any language, in one of three handwriting styles: Everyday, Neat or Round. Your words are saved on this device as you write, so closing the tab does not lose them. Open When never writes your letter for you. The moments and the weekly prompt are only there to help you start.

2. Seal

Choose a wax color (Letterbox red, Ink blue, Fern, Ochre or Plum), add a song link if you like, and choose how it travels:

Email. They get an email straight away saying a sealed letter is waiting, and another on the morning of its date, when it can be opened. The emails never contain your words.
Link or QR code. You get a private link and a QR code to print and tuck into a card or a gift.
Keep for now. It waits, sealed, on your own shelf until you are ready to give it.

Every letter has a date, and it stays locked until then, however it travels.

3. They open it

They open it when the moment comes: tap the seal and the letter unfolds. They can send one tap back ("It helped", "I needed this", "Made me laugh" or "Thank you"), and if you asked, we tell you it was opened.

After it is sealed

Unseal and edit any time before it is opened.
Delete any time, before or after. Deleted means gone, for you and for them.
Download your copy of any letter, or all of them at once from the privacy page.
Share it publicly, only if you want to, after it has been opened. We remove names and places and a person reads it before it goes on the public shelf. Unsent letters are never public.

Dates that matter

Save a birthday or an anniversary on your shelf and turn on a reminder. We send one email a week before, so the letter is there on the day. Nothing else, ever.

On another device

You never need an account. Letters you write and receive are listed on the device you used. If you want them on your phone and your computer, sign in with Google on your shelf and the shelf follows you to any device you sign in on. Unsent letters still stay on the device where you wrote them. If you would rather not sign in, enter the email a letter was sent to or from on your shelf and we will send the links again.