Party like it’s 1996 with this Palm Pilot emulator

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(Pocket-lint) – Missing your Palm Pilot or, worse yet, too young to have used one? Don’t panic, because the Internet Archive has just emulated it in your browser.

the Palm Pilot was arguably the forerunner of smartphones and was a small touchscreen device that you could do all sorts of things with. You could write using a stylus and a handwriting recognition system, send e-mails, etc. It was terrible and awesome at the same time, and now you can (re)live it in a web browser too.

The process of integrating various Palm Pilot applications into the emulator is still ongoing, but more than 500 of them, including games, can be used. It’s a dip in the heady days of the pre-iPhone era, and it’s breathtaking.

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to announce the PalmPilot emulation to the Internet Archive for the holidays, probably next week. All elements that currently work need to be described, so it’s not quite ready yet. Don’t tell anyone, okay? https://t.co/ye9z4iTPsx pic.twitter.com/0SNRVJw0Kp-

Jason Scott (@textfiles) November 24, 2022

Archivist said in a recent interview that it only took six months to get the existing CloudPilot emulator ready to install on a website. That doesn’t mean the whole project is done though, and Jason Scott says there’s still a lot of work to do and the project isn’t “quite ready” yet.

Nevertheless, this Palm Pilot emulator is there and he is very cool. You can try it out on your computer right now, but the best way to get the full experience is through your phone. Just pretend you were doing it 25 years ago and you’ll get the whole experience.

Written by Oliver Haslam.