Co-hunting something so physically beautiful with @conduit_design.
He called it “the wildest keyboard I have ever seen”🤯
At 4.75mm, Altar II barely looks like a mechanical keyboard. It sits almost as flat as a Magic Keyboard, without the usual height that comes with mechanical switches.
The whole product is built around fitting a real mechanical typing experience into that almost impossibly thin frame. The switches still have 1.8mm of travel, and the engineering gets obsessive enough that even the USB-C housing had to be custom-made because normal ones were thicker than the keyboard.
It’s rare to see a hardware project nail the industrial design and acoustics this well!
At 4.75mm it is actually travel-viable. My current keyboard is a small brick that never leaves the desk. Question on the companion app: how much of the dial and haptic customization lives in app versus firmware? Asking because I want to know if my setup carries over on a second Mac or if I start from scratch each time.
A 4.75mm mechanical board is a compromise I did not think was possible. My Magic Keyboard is flat and lifeless, and every mechanical I tried sat on the desk like a brick. Did the short travel keep a real bottom out, or is that the tradeoff?
Hi everyone, I'm Andrew, the creator of Altar II.
Altar II is an ultra-low profile (4.75mm) mechanical keyboard designed to replace your Magic Keyboard. It's the keyboard I wish Apple made.
It has fully mechanical switches with 1.8mm of travel, a magnetically detachable dial, haptic feedback, a red backlight, a speaker, and a native macOS companion app. The chassis is a single piece of CNC-machined aluminium.
I'm a heavy Mac user and I feel Apple hasn't given its keyboards the attention they deserve in terms of hardware, software or features, so I set out to change that. It has taken almost two years. The hardest parts were fitting a reasonably sized battery into the chassis and getting the power profiling right without touching the typing experience. There was also literally no space on the underside of the PCB, so every component had to go on top. Even the USB-C housing is custom because a standard one is thicker than the keyboard.
I've taken a lot of the feedback from our first keyboard, Altar I, and incorporated it into Altar II, including the detachable dial and pairing button placement.
Reservations are open now ($1 locks in the $249 price, against $349 retail). Kickstarter launches 10 November 2026.
About Altar II on Product Hunt
“The mechanical keyboard Apple never made”
Altar II launched on Product Hunt on August 25th, 2026 and earned 122 upvotes and 13 comments, placing #9 on the daily leaderboard. Shockingly thin, fully mechanical. Altar II combines a superlative typing experience with an unbelievable design.
Altar II was featured in Custom Keyboards (2.3k followers) and Hardware (11.4k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 3.9k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Altar II?
Altar II was hunted by Zac Zuo. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how Altar II stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Zac Zuo
Hi everyone!
Co-hunting something so physically beautiful with @conduit_design.
He called it “the wildest keyboard I have ever seen”🤯
At 4.75mm, Altar II barely looks like a mechanical keyboard. It sits almost as flat as a Magic Keyboard, without the usual height that comes with mechanical switches.
The whole product is built around fitting a real mechanical typing experience into that almost impossibly thin frame. The switches still have 1.8mm of travel, and the engineering gets obsessive enough that even the USB-C housing had to be custom-made because normal ones were thicker than the keyboard.
It’s rare to see a hardware project nail the industrial design and acoustics this well!