I never lose my work now, thanks to this brilliant app that saves my texts

My favorite unofficial category on the Play Store is "apps that look like they're stuck in 2014."

You know the type of app listing I mean, where navigation buttons appear in all the screenshots, and they all appear to have been taken on a Samsung Galaxy S7.

Most of the apps in this category are old, slightly broken, and have been superseded by newer and better apps. However, the exceptions are notable indeed.

In an era of "enshittification," where updates are pushed for the sake of change rather than actual improvement, there's something to be celebrated about the app that hasn't changed since 2014.

My favorite is Type Machine, an app that is functionally identical to its original iteration. It's more useful than most apps I discover on the Play Store, and deserves far greater recognition.

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A secure archive of everything I type

No more worrying about crashing apps

Type Machine works on a basic premise. Whenever I type something in my phone, whether it's on Drive or Discord, Type Machine saves a copy.

It saves everything from single emojis I send as reactions to my dad or the paragraphs I type when I'm drafting an article on the train.

The idea is that if I lose what I've written, due to technical or human error, I have an archive I can copy all my lost work from.

The app saves text as I type; inputs are sent simultaneously to the app I'm using and Type Machine.

Type Machine uses my Android phone's accessibility features to function. While this means it has total access to my phone, several security features give me peace of mind.

Type Machine offers effective security measures

Enough to give me peace of mind

The idea of having an archive of everything I type on my phone made me uneasy at first.

Much of what I use my phone for is for sensitive personal and professional communication, which are otherwise locked safely in their respective apps.

Type Machine alleviates my concern in three ways.

The first is basic PIN access; a minimum four-digit PIN can be required to open the app.

The second is regular cleanup; I use the app to recover text lost in the moment, so I don't need it to save my texts from weeks ago. I therefore set the app to delete all entries older than a day.

Finally, I can instruct Type Machine to ignore certain apps. Banking apps were the first I added, plus anything that requires me to enter a PIN.

While the app doesn't appear to save anything entered in a password or PIN field, it's better to be safe than sorry.

There's also a handy toggle in the app's Settings menu that lets me disable the app.

Brilliance in simplicity

Feature bloat doesn't have to be a thing

My ongoing frustration with modern apps is feature bloat.

This problem isn't just with AI, but the continued attempts by developers who think adding features is the same as adding value.

I want apps that do what they were built for, and nothing else.

Let's say I was typing a very important and detailed email, but alas! Gmail crashes while typing, and it doesn't save it to my drafts folder.

I head into Type Machine, and there it is, ready at the top of my screen with a handy app icon to indicate which app it's from.

I tap that icon, and behold, my text has a copy button at the top of my screen.

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I tap that button to save the text to my clipboard and head back to Gmail. It's as simple as that.

However, this isn't to say that Type Machine is bereft of nifty tools.

Remember how Type Machine saves text live? It also saves edits live. So if I edit text, Type Machine will save the changed text.

Type Machine then goes further. For each saved entry, there's a slider that lets me return to earlier versions of the text.

Perhaps I wanted to see what I originally wrote? Type Machine lets me see everything I wrote and edited from the start with timestamped markers.

Type Machine is the perfect app

Type Machine requires a one-time purchase of $3. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best purchase I've made on the Play Store.

Most of the time, I forget that Type Machine is running. But every time I delete texts by accident, or an app crashes, I thank the stars that I discovered it.

Type Machine's functionality has remained relatively unchanged since 2014. However, it still receives regular updates to ensure it's compatible with each new version of Android.