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✍️ Using Letters

Letters is a modern, distraction-free word processor for GNOME. This guide covers the day-to-day workflow.

First Run​

Launch Letters from the app grid or terminal:

flatpak run org.tunaos.letters

You'll see a clean, empty document with:

  • Toolbar — formatting controls (bold, italic, headings, lists)
  • Canvas — the document editing area
  • Status bar — word count and zoom level

Creating a Document​

New document​

# Start typing immediately. Letters opens a blank document by default.
# Press Ctrl+N for a new document.

From a template​

Letters supports opening existing documents in multiple formats:

FormatExtensionUse Case
Microsoft Word.docxOffice compatibility
OpenDocument.odtLibreOffice compatibility
Markdown.mdTechnical writing, docs
HTML.htmlWeb publishing

Open a file​

# Ctrl+O or File → Open
# Navigate to your file and select it

Writing​

Formatting shortcuts​

ShortcutEffect
Ctrl+BBold
Ctrl+IItalic
Ctrl+UUnderline
Ctrl+Shift+SStrikethrough
Ctrl+1-6Heading 1-6
Ctrl+Shift+LBullet list
Ctrl+Shift+8Numbered list
Ctrl+Shift+TTable

Word count​

The status bar shows live word and character counts. Click the count for details (pages, paragraphs, sentences).

Exporting​

To PDF​

# File → Export as PDF
# Or Ctrl+Shift+E

Letters uses WeasyPrint for high-quality PDF output with CSS styling preserved.

To other formats​

# File → Save As
# Choose from: DOCX, ODT, MD, HTML

The underlying pandoc engine ensures faithful format conversion.

Advanced Features​

Find and Replace​

# Ctrl+F — find
# Ctrl+H — find and replace

Table support​

Insert tables from the toolbar or with Ctrl+Shift+T. Resize columns by dragging.

Dark mode​

Letters respects the system theme. Toggle with:

# GNOME Settings → Appearance → Dark
# Or use the system dark mode shortcut

Integration with TunaOS​

Letters is pre-installable on TunaOS via Flatpak and integrates with:

  • Files (Nautilus) — right-click any .docx/.odt/.md → Open with Letters
  • GNOME Search — search document titles from the overview
  • Tavern — manage Letters installation and updates via the Homebrew GUI

Contributing​

Letters is a Rust/GTK 4 project under the TunaOS office suite. See the GitHub repo for issues and PRs.

Good first contributions:

  • Add a unit test
  • Fix an accessibility label
  • Translate UI strings
  • Improve Markdown export

See Also​