# How the Pin Screen works

The Pin Screen is the pin-art toy as a surface for a web page. A word stands in polished pins under one raking lamp. Press or drag and the pins sink under your pointer; shake it and the board goes flat, then the word pushes itself back up through the pins. This page is how.

Guide · With a Pass · https://tactileui.dev/docs/how-the-pin-screen-works

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No image ships: the relief is drawn from text in the page's own fonts, a shape, or any image you pass in.

## Pins on a real grid

The real toy packs its pins close, in a hex grid. Mine uses the same grid, with whole pins only and the grid centred, so there's never half a pin at an edge. On a small screen the pitch shrinks until a letter's stroke still spans enough pins, so a word on a phone gets finer pins instead of turning to mush.