The Wordrunner mechanical keyboard is an easily distracted writer’s dream

The latest distraction-busting gadget from writer-friendly US company Astrohaus is an attractive mechanical keyboard called Wordrunner.

While mechanical keyboards offer that satisfying clickety-clack and often provide a more tactile feel with an opportunity with greater accuracy, this model has a few extra tools for keeping the distractions of social media at bay.

For example, there’s a mechanical word counter that’ll populate as you hit the space bar. Because it offers eight digits and saves your last session, it’s ideal for those working on novels.

There’s also a sprint timer that will give you a little motivation to bang out the words within a specific timeframe. It’s also possible to paise the timer if you’re simply looking to accomplish a specific time to write per day, away from the distractions.

Revealed at CES 2025, Wordrunner also offers a writing-specific function row with shortcut keys to tools like reload, find, top, bottom, up/down paragraph, print, undo and redo. Hotkeys are also available that could be used to launch writing apps. There’s also a red joystick in the top right corner that can be used to navigate documents like a trackpad.

The aluminium construction is joined by floating replaceable keys. Hands-on impressions at CES suggest it’s a sturdy and reliable piece of kit.

“Writers use keyboards more than almost anyone else, yet they’ve never had professional-grade tools built specifically for them,” founder and CEO Adam Leeb says (via TechCrunch).

“While gamers have an entire industry creating specialised features for them, writers have been forced to rely on general-purpose keyboards and add-on software to track their work. Wordrunner transforms this relationship by making the keyboard itself an active participant in the writing process — not just a passive input device, but a true writing companion.”

Astrohaus is giving writers the opportunity to reserve the keyboard for $1 and lock in the early bird price when the Kickstarter campaign goes live next month. The actual price is yet to be revealed.