aemerson_

Thank you for flagging this, it is now fixed.

It was an issue with Firefox and the codec we use for the audio samples. I just changed the codec for the audio to something that works on all browsers.

(For reference @ebastler designed the PCB for Altar II, and did an amazing job)

Early summer 2027 is the target.

Don't tempt me with a good time. I would love to tackle a mouse — I have a lot of ideas!

Yes the butterfly switches were pretty bad. Superficially ours are similar but there are a few key differences:

- Ours has an actual mechanical switch (with a spring and contact leaf) that is pressed, the butterfly switches were a metal dome

- Our switches have much more vertical travel (1.8mm) compared to the butterfly switches (~0.5mm). A big part of the issues with the butterfly switches was they had tiny tolerances, so specks of dust or dirt could jam them. Since our switches are so much larger, this is less of a problem

- Butterfly switch arms were made from plastic, our arms are made from steel.

I'm afraid not. For two reasons:

Firstly it makes no sense for a backlight to be anything but a warm colour at night because it strains your eyes exactly when they are most prone to it (at night, in the dark).

And secondly because it allows us some modest power savings. The chemistry used in our red LEDs (AlGaInP) is more power efficient than that used in other colours. Being a very thin device, we have a small battery, and therefore need to save power wherever we can.

The final weight has not been determined yet as we are trying out different materials, internal designs and components. But the final weight will be 300g-400g or so.

I have not written about the process but it is a great idea, I'd love to do that. An audio format might also be interesting.

Fitting the USB-C port into it was actually a real challenge. We also have custom made USB-C housing because all the off the shelf ones were thicker than the keyboard!

Ah very interesting. I will make sure these are included.

Thank you so much. It means a lot to hear that. We're a very small team (1 full time, 3 part time) so going up against a company worth five trillion dollars is quite daunting!

Good question on the haptics. There's no feedback when press most of the keys. But there is some feedback when you do things like turn the dial, or complete a shortcut (e.g. cmd + c). This is all configurable in the companion app as well.

The battery is in the logo side, correct. In fact most of that entire area is taken up by the battery! We did expand vertically that area slightly as you can see, to allow for a slightly thicker batter.

That is a very interesting detail, I never knew that!

The switches feel like a M-Series MacBook with a decent amount more travel and more "snappy", tactile feeling. They feel quite different to, for example, Choc switches (which we used on our previous keyboard).

Thank you, and what you say is completely fair. The Keychron K3 is an excellent keyboard and certainly gets the job done for many people. I would actually argue Altar II is excellent value at $249, especially when you consider the materials, special components, and scale we are at.

Altar II is quite a quiet keyboard, and there is a special sandwich of materials specifically designed to make it as quiet as possible.

The built-in speaker is interesting. Really it's just there because it's fun, and its nice to get the odd bleep or chime when your keyboard connects or begins charging.

It is fully compatible with Linux with respect to typing, volume control and so on.

The firmware source code will be published publicly on Github in the future, as our other keyboard (Altar I) is: https://github.com/electronicmaterialsoffice/firmware-altar-.... Anyone is welcome to play around with it.

We have spent a lot of time and effort finding manufacturing partners and ensuring they can produce Altar II at the scale and quality we require. In fact we have delayed announcing Altar II for a long time because we wanted to be absolutely certain it was manufacturable and shippable at our price points.

Do also bear in mind the final retail price is $349. the $249 price is for early pre-orders only.

I believe you are referring to the "pre-travel" of the key and yes, Altar II has a very small amount of pre-travel actually. This is partially due to it having such a small vertical travel.

Thank you, it's been a real labour of love!

People are raising a good point RE Touch ID. It is possible to add a fingerprint sensor. But that fingerprint sensor will never be able to do the things that Touch ID is most useful for: i.e. use Apple Pay. It would be incredibly confusing to have a fingerprint sensor that was usable for some things and not for others. Therefore the better experience today is to not include a fingerprint sensor at all, imo.

Reservations are open until the Kickstarter launches on November 10th 2026.

Thank you so much! A genuinely silly amount of time went into the website.

If you'll indulge me for a moment, because I never get to talk about this stuff: the corner radii of the cards on the site are actually "squircles" rather than perfect rounded corners. To me this is much more pleasing to the eye. The squircles are achieved by creating a PNG mask which is then 9-sliced and expanded to mask off the edge of the cards. Another mask is used for the stroke and laid on top of the first mask, to give the gradient border effect.

The travel distance on the Altar II switches is 1.8mm, so about 0.8mm more than on a MacBook keyboard. Similar to those keyboards, there is very little pre-travel on Altar II keys.

With regard to Windows keys that is a possibility. We shipped our previous keyboard, Altar I, with both Mac and Windows markings on the keys.

This price is only for people who reserve before we launch on Kickstarter. I agree it is good value but also I should point out the retail price will be $349 for anyone buying after we fulfil all the pre-orders.

Rest assured we are building a sustainable business that will be around for the long haul.

Glad you like Altar I!

They feel quite different to the Chocs, unsurprisingly. Although the required actuation force is close to the Choc Reds (40gf on our switch vs 50gf on the Choc Reds), because it's spread over such a small vertical travel it feels much "snappier". There is also very little pre-travel. It's kind of like a much sharper/tactile feeling chiclet switch with more vertical travel, if that makes sense.

Everything lives on the keyboard itself. The app just configures files on the device, basically. The keyboard also works without the app of course. This approach has the added benefit of making your configuration portable. For example if you remap your dial, and move to a different computer, your remapped dial will persist.

There are a couple of small quality-of-life features that do require the app: for example if you want haptic feedback when you receive a notification. This is because the keyboard has no idea what is happening on your OS, and requires some middleware. But all the core functionality requires no app at all.

To answer your second question, the firmware for Altar II will be open-sourced, as the firmware for our Altar I keyboard is. You can see the Altar I firmware source code here: https://github.com/electronicmaterialsoffice/firmware-altar-...

Both Altar I and Altar II firmware are based on the open-source ZMK (https://zmk.dev). We try to contribute back to ZMK whenever we can because we have benefitted so much from it. Two members of our team are also long-standing ZMK contributors.

Not at the moment.

If we did a numpad I would probably do it as a separate device. Personally I don't like how the numpad sits between the edge of my keyboard and mouse. I'd prefer it to the left of my keyboard or to the right side of my mouse.

It does! We do some firmware trickery to make the globe key behave just like the Magic Keyboard. Can you tell me what exactly you use it for? I just want to make sure we have your use case covered.

It's kind of like a M-series Mac keyboard but with substantially more travel on the key (we have about 0.5mm more travel), and more of a more definitive sense of when the key is actuated. It's a much more tactile experience than the MacBook keyboards, but that is still the closest comparison.

I appreciate the TE comparison! I am very inspired by them. Maybe in the future we can make a thicker keyboard for you.