For students. Built one at a time.
Everything due. Nothing else.
Margin pulls every assignment from Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, and your calendar onto one small screen on your desk. It doesn't do anything else.
Built, tested, and numbered by hand.
It's one moment, repeated daily. The rest of the device exists to support it.
You walk past your desk on the way out.
Lab Report 3, due in four hours.
You stay in. You write it.
From your browser to your desk.
Your school's class portal
Canvas Blackboard D2L · Brightspace Moodle Any calendarplus Paste any iCal share link — Apple, Google, Outlook, Proton, Notion — and the device reads it directly. It never touches Todoist.
If you already use Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, or Moodle, you're almost done. A small browser plugin on your laptop watches your school's class portal for new assignments and writes them straight into your Todoist as tasks, one project per course. Your device reads from Todoist on every refresh. Your assignments never pass through a Margin server. We run a small sync service, but it holds only your device's number and your Todoist token — encrypted, and only so your device can reach Todoist. Your task titles never touch it.
Requires a free Todoist account. Why we picked Todoist →
One project per class. Sorted before you look.
When the plugin sees a new course on your class portal, you point it at a Todoist project. From then on, every assignment from CS 225 lands in CS 225. Every problem set from PHYS 211 lands in PHYS 211. The colors and labels you set in Todoist follow them to the device.
Open Todoist on your phone, check things off there, and the device updates on the next refresh. Open it on the device, mark Lab Report 3 done, and Todoist updates. Edit anywhere. The other place catches up.
If you already have a project layout in Todoist that works for you, you keep it. Onboarding walks through mapping each course to whatever project you want. No auto-create, no surprises.
No feed. No scrolling. Just what's due.
An app on your phone is one swipe from everything else on your phone. You open it to see what's due. Twenty minutes later you're watching a video about lighthouse keepers. This isn't a discipline problem. It's a design problem.
A small, ambient dashboard. No algorithm. No AI. No feed. You walk past it. You see one red line, three task names, a date. You go back to whatever you were doing. Between refreshes it's just ink on paper — nothing moves, nothing asks. There's nothing else here.
That separation is the entire product.
If that sounds like your desk, the waitlist takes one field →
Same week, different tones.
Five themes ship with the device. Cycle through them with one button.
Put your week on it.
Type a couple of real assignments. Watch them land on the screen the way they would on your desk.
Want it on your desk for real? Join the waitlist →
I'm a physics major at Illinois. I got tired of opening five tabs every morning to figure out what was due. Margin is what I built instead.
— Mitch Ring, founder
Buying one for a student? Read this.
Students rarely buy something like this for themselves. They'll white-knuckle the semester on a phone calendar and swear next term will be different. More often than not, it's a parent, a grandparent, or an older sibling who puts a Margin on the desk. We built for that, too.
It isn't another app or another subscription. It's a small dashboard that sits on a desk, quietly tells them what's due, and stays out of the way. No screen time added. No login they'll forget. No notification they'll learn to ignore. The longer note for gift-buyers →
Fifty pieces. The list goes first.
Hand-assembled, numbered, shipping summer 2028. The waitlist gets first pick of the fifty and the launch price locked in. Leave your email and we'll write once, the day pre-orders open.
Is Margin right for you yet?
- Browser: Chrome or a Chromium browser (Edge, Brave, Arc) to run the setup plugin. Safari and Firefox come later.
- Tasks: a free Todoist account. Calendars work through any iCal link, whatever app you keep them in.
- Your school: Canvas, Blackboard Ultra, D2L Brightspace, or Moodle — and confirmed for your campus. Live now at UIUC; NIU in beta.
- Shipping: US & Canada first.
Not all four yet? Join the waitlist anyway — batch two widens the list, and we'll write when Margin fits. See the full school list →
Outside North America? Sign up anyway. We want to know how many to ship in batch two.
Expected $189. Final number set at our Kickstarter launch.
The parts run about $80. The rest is us pushing the fix when your school changes Canvas — so it still works in April, not just the weekend you set it up. Why not just build one? →
By joining, you agree we can email you when pre-orders open. No newsletter, no third parties. Privacy policy →
Build log · June 2026 Setup got radically simpler. Sign in once in the extension and the device pairs itself, no API keys to type on the Pi. Beta units now have buttons, and the type got sharper.The road to batch one
- End-to-end pipeline working: assignments flow from the class portal into Todoist and onto the device
- All five themes rendering on the real e-paper panel
- One-tap setup: sign in once in the extension and the device pairs to your account and pulls its Todoist token automatically, no keys to type on the Pi
- A 3D-printed bezel and housing to live with
- Final enclosure & locked dimensions
- Pre-orders open via Kickstarter, 2027
- Batch one assembled & shipped — summer 2028
USA & Canada to start