Help & support

Typing Museum for macOS

Almost every question is one of the first two. Both have the same shape: the app is working, but macOS has not yet been told to let it listen, or Apple has not yet been asked to hand your purchase back.

• I hear nothing when I type in other applications
• I paid for the full collection and it is locked again
• Which machines can I type on without paying?
• Some machines make no sound at all
• Where do the recordings come from?
• Will it run on my Mac?
• Removing the app

I hear nothing when I type in other applications

This is the common one, and it is not a fault. macOS will not let any app know that a key was pressed in another app unless you grant it Input Monitoring. Until you do, Typing Museum can only hear keys pressed while its own window is in front — which is why the typing pad works and your email does not.

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring.
2. Switch Typing Museum on. If it is not listed, open the app, click the amber notice at the foot of its window, and macOS will add it.
3. Quit Typing Museum and open it again. macOS only hands the permission over to a freshly started app.

If it is switched on and you still hear nothing, check that sounds are not muted: the speaker button at the bottom right of the window, or Sounds in the menu-bar menu.

Granting this does not let the app read what you type. It sees which key moved and nothing else — not the letter, not your clipboard, not the app you are in — and it keeps none of it. The privacy page sets out how that is enforced rather than merely promised.

I paid for the full collection and it is locked again

A purchase belongs to your Apple Account, not to one Mac, so it can always be brought back. In the menu bar choose Typing Museum → Restore Purchase, or open the collection and use the same item in the app menu.

Two things that trip people up: you must be signed in to the App Store with the account that made the purchase, and Family Sharing is on — so if someone in your family group bought it, restoring on your own account will find it.

Which machines can I type on without paying?

Three: the IBM Model F122, the Olivetti Lettera 22 and the Triumph Matura. They are the full experience, not demos — a manual portable, an electric buckling-spring board and a mid-century office machine, chosen because between them they cover most of what a keyboard can sound like.

Everything else about all 131 machines is free and always was: every photograph, every history, the innovations story, and the page of sources behind each recording. The museum is free to walk around. The purchase is for typing on the exhibits.

Some machines make no sound at all

67 of the 131 machines have a recording behind them. The other 64 are there to be read about. For some, no usable recording exists anywhere; for others, what could be found was not good enough to put a name under. They are marked, so you can tell before you click, and the Show models with no sounds filter hides them if you would rather only see what you can play.

Where do the recordings come from?

Every one is public domain, CC0 or Creative Commons, and every one is credited inside the app under Sources & Credits with its title, author, licence and a link to the original.

Where a machine is too rare to have been recorded, another machine of the same mechanism stands in for it. The app says so on that machine's page, and names the one actually recorded. A museum that fakes its labels is not worth visiting.

Will it run on my Mac?

It needs macOS 13 Ventura or later and runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs. It lives in the menu bar and puts no icon in the Dock until you open a window.

Removing the app

Drag Typing Museum from your Applications folder to the Bin. Its settings go with it. Nothing of yours was ever stored anywhere else, and nothing was ever sent anywhere, so there is nothing left behind and nothing to delete from a server.