Postcard mode

Most social apps reward speed. Postcard mode rewards the opposite.

In Postcard mode, the timeline becomes a stack of single cards — one post at a time, full-bleed on the screen, with a quiet swipe to the next. No infinite scroll. No engagement bar pulsing for your attention. Just one post, sized to be the thing you sit with for a minute or two before you decide what to do with it.

The metaphor is exactly what it sounds like: postcards. A small stack of them on the kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon. You pick up one. You read it. You set it down. You pick up the next.

Postcard Mode, on the porch table.

Each post arrives as a card you can pick up, turn over, and put back down. Long-press to flip and see the engagement context on the back. Reduce Motion respected throughout.

Lanai

Margaret Eames @margaret.editor

I keep meaning to say — the porch light is the most unreasonably comforting object I own. It’s the only piece of architecture in our entire house that has a single, honest job, and it does it.

What’s in it

• One card per screen, sized to be readable from a comfortable distance
• A subtle paper-warmth in the background that drifts almost imperceptibly with time
• A small light effect across the card on the way in — the way the corner of a printed photograph catches an afternoon sun
• Standard interactions on the card — reply, repost, like, bookmark, share as image — without the engagement-bar density of the timeline
• Opt-in, not the default. Most users will live in the timeline. Postcard mode is for the moments when you want a different pace.

On the way

Postcard mode is on the v1.0 roadmap. It exists for a different mood of reading — slower, more considered, less scrollable. We mention it here because it’s part of what Lanai is. Not because it ships today.