Letter Rip

Address and print envelopes from your browser.

Prints addressed envelopes, singly or merged from a spreadsheet list, from a browser. Labels are next. Built for managed Chromebooks where Google Docs is blocked. No server: everything runs on the device and nothing is uploaded.

Use

1. Open the site.
2. Type the recipient address. The return address is remembered on this device.
3. Choose the envelope size from the list (default #10), or choose Custom… and enter the width and height in inches or millimeters. Each side must be 3 to 20 inches.
4. Click Print envelope. The PDF opens in a new tab; print it from there. Make sure the printer's paper size matches the envelope and envelopes are loaded in the envelope tray.

Each address box has a toolbar above the text:

• Font: the font for that address.
• Size: the point size, from 6 to 72. To size selected lines, select text first. With nothing selected, Size applies to the whole address.
• B and I: bold and italic. A button is disabled when the font has no such face, as with script fonts.
• Alignment: left, center, or right.

To toggle bold or italic from the keyboard, press Ctrl+B or Ctrl+I (Cmd+B or Cmd+I on a Mac).

When you paste text, the box keeps only bold, italic, and line breaks.

The From and To switches turn printing on or off for each address.

Export layout saves your return address and preferences to envelope-layout.json, which you can Import on another Chromebook.

Print many envelopes from a list

To print one envelope per row of a spreadsheet:

1. In the To card, choose From a list.
2. Drop a CSV, TSV, or Excel file on the panel. Or click Paste cells and paste from any spreadsheet.
3. Check the table:
   • Turn First row is headers on or off.
   • For sideways sheets, turn on Headers run down the first column.
   • To rename a header, click it.
   • To skip a row, clear its checkbox.
4. Under the table, build the address. Click Insert field to add a field such as {{Name}}. You can put several fields on one line, for example {{First}} {{Last}} or {{City}}, {{State}} {{Zip}}.
5. To check each envelope, use the ‹ › stepper in the preview. Then click Print N envelopes.

Notes:

• Your list stays on the device and isn't saved between sessions. The address template is saved.
• A cell with several lines prints as several lines.
• A line whose fields are all empty is dropped, so a missing second street line leaves no gap.
• Insert field is available after you load a list.
• A row with no address text is skipped. The preview shows how many.
• The table shows the first 200 rows. Select all and Clear apply to every row.
• When you include more than 2,000 rows, the app notes that making the PDF may take a while.

Fonts

Each address block has its own font. The font picker offers these sources:

• Standard and bundled fonts: work offline and need no setup. The build includes 14 bundled fonts. The 12 non-script fonts include bold and italic faces. Great Vibes and Dancing Script have only a regular face.
• Google Fonts: a searchable list that appears only when you configure an API key. The app fetches bold and italic faces from Google Fonts when the family has them.
• Installed on this device: fonts installed on your computer. This source requires Chrome 103 or later. The first use shows a one-time permission prompt. The app uses the family's Bold and Italic styles when they're installed.

When a font has no bold or italic face, the PDF uses the closest face that exists. It never fakes a style.

Font collections such as .ttc files aren't supported.

To enable the Google Fonts search:

1. In Google Cloud, create a Google Fonts Developer API key.
2. Restrict the key to your site's domain with an HTTP referrer restriction.
3. Copy .env.example to .env.
4. Set VITE_GOOGLE_FONTS_API_KEY in .env to your key.
5. Run npm run build.

The key is embedded in the built site, so the referrer restriction is what protects it.

Position

Each address block (return and recipient) has a Position section under its text box:

• Anchor: one of nine positions on a 3×3 grid, measured 0.5 in from the envelope edges.
• Nudge: X and Y offsets in inches. Positive X moves the block right. Positive Y moves it down.

To fit envelopes with pre-printed elements such as a logo or a window, use the nudge offsets. The preview shows the result before you print.

Develop

npm install
npm run dev      # local server
npm test         # unit tests
npm run check    # type check
npm run build    # static site in dist/

Deploy

npm run build produces dist/. Copy its contents to any static host or any path on an existing site. The build uses relative URLs, so it works at /, /envelopes/, or a subdomain.

dist/ includes about 17 MB of bundled fonts, including the bold and italic faces. The browser downloads a face only when an address uses it.

SEO and sharing

To get canonical and social tags, a Sitemap: line in robots.txt, and sitemap.xml, set VITE_SITE_URL in .env to the full public URL (for example https://example.com/letter-rip/) before you run npm run build. When it's empty, the build omits those URL tags and writes robots.txt without a sitemap.

To regenerate the social image public/og.png after you edit docs/og-source.html, run this from the repo root: "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --headless=new --screenshot="$PWD/public/og.png" --window-size=1200,630 --hide-scrollbars --allow-file-access-from-files "file://$PWD/docs/og-source.html".

License

Letter Rip is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE. Bundled fonts, interface fonts, and libraries keep their own licenses, listed in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.