TextWall

TextWall
	OG TextWall in 2023, before its closure
Created by	Duck
URL	https://textwall.cc
Launched	February 2020; 5 years ago

Textwall.cc, formerly known as textwall.xyz, was a text canvas website launched in February 2020 by Duck.

It has some advantages to OWOT, such as a modern and intuitive graphical user interface, different fonts, smooth scrolling and visible cursors with nametags, but also some disadvantages such as the limited number of colors, and the text canvas being limited to 100,000 cells in any direction.

TextWall has gone offline several times throughout its history, causing many TextWallers to migrate to OWOT. The site went down permanently in 2024/2025, though you can still access a clone of it at tw.2s4.me, which is hosted by FP.

Textwall.cc(or the original TextWall/Duck's TextWall) and tw.2s4.me(or TextWall 2s4/FP's TextWall) will be referred to interchangeably for many parts of this page, since they share most basic features.

Check out TextWall's Fandom wiki here.

Relationship with OWOT

Many OWOT users have shown a strong distaste of TextWall's userbase, which is generally younger than OWOT's across the board(though it should be noted that both sites are predominantly inhabited by minors). The TextWaller migration brought with it several traditions from TextWall that many OWOTers found to be irritating, such as antiswear and fictional googology.

Anti-TextWall sentiments have resulted in raids against the website, and even instances where death threats were sent to Textwallers.

It should be noted that some Textwall migrants, such as lime.owot, have since been accepted into the OWOT community.

yeah. the textwall immigration wave destroyed the owot userbase and the stain is still there. there's still a bunch of little kids or dumbfucks every once in a while but back then they were fucking everywhere. even if you uttered the word "fuck" once you'd get a handful of kids spiraling telling you that SWEARING BAD!!! U MUST NOT SWEAR!!
they tried to... reclaim owot. transform its rules and already built community to fit themselves and what they wanted. selfish and annoying. parasitic, even. and they are still here.
trollboxers are coming too, there's a few good trollboxers but the rest are the same as the textwall kids from back then
– d9eoead on TextWallers

On their part, TextWallers seem to have some amount of animosity towards OWOT as well. This can be seen on TextWall's Fandom wiki(Ex. pages calling tw.2s4.me a ripoff) though it is unclear whether this sentiment applies to the wider community.

Also check out this video.

Differences from OWOT

*Most of the information below taken from FP's tw.2s4.me, which replicates the 2023 version of TextWall but has several differences, most notably in not having a world border. The original TextWall did not seem to be open source, so FP would have had to rebuild certain features manually.

UI

TextWall's most noticeable difference from OWOT is its modern UI.

TextWall's settings menu, color slider and chat

Visible cursors

Cursors in TextWall are visible to the public by default. They also display their owners' usernames(or IDs for anons).

Another difference is that you can place your cursor on protected squares, though nothing will happen when you attempt to type there.

Various cursors at tw2s4.me's Spawn

Limited color palette

TextWall only has 31 colors, all of which are rather light. This limits the range of creations, but also makes the canvas more visually appealing(whereas OWOT can often look like an eyesore when it is spammed with a wide range of bright, contrasting colors).

Fonts

TextWall allows users to choose between a list of fonts, and to customize the sizes of characters on the canvas.

These features are also accessible on OWOT and YWOT using the console.

Inconsolata, the default font
Libertinus Mono
Cascadia Mono
Customizing font size

Coordinate system

Each coordinate in TextWall corresponds to a single character/cell, whereas each coordinate in OWOT is composed of 4x4 tiles(which are themselves divided into 16x8 cells).

Canvas size

The original TextWall was not endless, and had a definitive border at 100,000 coordinates in any direction.

FP's tw.2s4.me is infinite just like OWOT, but starts to show noticeable glitches whenever you teleport beyond a certain point.

List of glitches:^[1]

X 900,000 / Y 900,000: Username begins to fall off the canvas.
X 3,500,000 / Y 3,500,000: The cursor appears slightly above the username.
X 5,000,000 / Y 5,000,000: Cursor stretches to 1–1.5 times its normal size when moved.
X 7,000,000 / Y 7,000,000: Usernames turn into gray rectangles with names positioned bottom-left. Gray lines appear; text is rendered above the cursor.
X 10,000,000 / Y 10,000,000: Username detaches and appears in the top-left when moving downward.
X 15,000,000 / Y 15,000,000: Cursor becomes larger; users appear nearly anonymous. Text appears three times smaller and is offset above the cursor.
X 30,000,000 / Y 30,000,000: Cursors disappear, but text enlarges.
X 60,000,000 / Y 60,000,000: Gray outlines on the canvas become thicker.
X 95,000,000 / Y 95,000,000: Text lengthens by about 1.5 blocks.
X 97,500,000 / Y 97,500,000: Gray outlines become thinner and stretch.
X 98,000,000 / Y 98,000,000: Writing limit is reached. Although the wall is infinite, severe glitches begin to corrupt the main wall.
X 337,500,000 / Y 337,500,000: Gray outlines become solid-filled.
X 999,999,999,999 / Y 1,000,000,000,000: Marks the outermost border of the canvas.

Worlds

Users can access walls(the equivalent of public worlds on OWOT) by adding characters after the TextWall URL. Each public wall corresponds to a separate location on the Main Wall. For example, entering tw.2s4.me/help teleports you to X:-89120 Y:-59510.

Users can also create "personal walls"(the equivalent of userpages) that are located on separate canvases. An example of a personal wall is tw.2s4.me/~lime.person.

In the original TextWall, personal walls were significantly smaller than the Main Wall and had a world border at 1,000 coordinates in any direction.

TextWall's teleportation menu

Moderation

It is unknown how Duck handled moderation in the original TextWall.

FP is significantly more liberal about appointing admins on tw.2s4.me than on OWOT, most likely due to the fact that he himself doesn't pay much attention to the site and is willing to let the community moderate it in his stead. Admins/mods on FP's TextWall include lime.owot, Haster, Bzuki, Falling1, Waller Ameno, and others.

Scripting

The original TextWall's source code was heavily obfuscated so as to prevent scripting.

FP's TextWall enables scripting just like OWOT.

There is also a heavy limit on the speed of pasting/writing text, especially for anons. Erasing and pasting spaces is much faster, however.

Default pasting speed for anons in tw.2s4.me, notice how the process speeds up when pasting blank spaces

Feature set (aka. TODO list)

Limited colors
- 15 colors from 2020 to April 2022 (the r/place 2017 palette minus white)
- 31 colors since April 2022 (the r/place 2022 palette minus white)
Text protection
- Precise text protection (added in July 2023)
Text copying (added in 2021)
- Ability to copy colors as well (added in 2022)
- Ability to copy text decorations (added in late 2022(?))
Registration (added in 2021)
Smooth momentum
Menu on top left
- Paste button for mobile (added in 2023(?))
- Home button - jump to spawn or center of a user world
- Copy character
- Open palette
- Open settings
- Day/night button
  - Ability to set custom background and text color
- Warp to coordinates or a user page/world
Asynchronous renderer
Ability to set your client's font
- Various monospace fonts
  - Inconsolata, Courier, Cuisine, etc.
  - Fixedsys (pixelated)
- Various bitmap fonts
  - Terminus
  - IBM-VGA
  - Fixed
  - Unifont
Chatbox (added in 2021/22, put on hold in 2023)
Text decorations (added in September(?) 2022)
- Can right click to see B/I/U/S markup
  - Animation to the context menu added in summer 2023)
Symbols for Legacy Computing (added in September(?) 2022)
- Used font file for all symbols
- Removed in January 2023
- Re-added in July 2023
  - All symbols are rendered in code
    - Includes all box-drawing characters
Ability to see user's cursors
- Cursors gained smooth panning in 2021(?)
- Nametags under cursors
- Ability to hide other user's cursors
- Ability to become anonymous
User walls (added in 2022)
- Ability to protect text
  - Member areas
  - Owner areas (added in July 2023)
- Ability to manage members
- Ability to make wall read-only
- Ability to see all of a user's walls
  - Ability to make wall unlisted (added in 2023)
Client obfuscation
- Became more rigorously obfuscated in early August 2023
- Efforts to hinder Devtools occurred in late July 2023
Pinch to zoom on mobile
- Improved on/near August 7, 2023, can now zoom in precisely
Captcha is required to access the website (began in June 2023)

Closure incidents

Our World of News covers the closure of Textwall(June 10th, 2024)

Every TextWall closure has brought more and more of its userbase to OWOT, some of whom have decided to stay permanently.

November 2021

On November 1st, 2021, TextWall briefly shut down for a few hours. It was reported that the lead developer lost interest in the website in the spur of the moment after some spamming raids. Shortly after the server went down, the DNS records for the site and its derivatives were deleted and TextWall was removed from the DuckGroup website. After the website was reinstated, the main page was mostly erased, and only registered users could write on any page. Registration was closed for a while.

June 2023

On June 24th, 2023, TextWall briefly shut down again until the next morning. This is assumed to have occurred in the spur of the moment right after a battle between two scripters (falling1 and KKosty4ka). Shortly after the server went down, the site's DNS records were deleted. After the website was reinstated, only whitelisted users could access the site. The next day, access was granted to everybody, and a CAPTCHA to access the website was added.

On June 25th, 2025, FP created tw.2s4.me as a shelter for TextWall refugees.

tw.2s4.me is a throwaway TW clone made right after its shutdown, so I took no care in its backend
— FP

2024

TextWall's main wall was wiped in May of 2024 and set to read-only for a prolonged period of time. Personal walls were still editable during this time, but account registration was disabled.^[2]

On June 9th, 2024, TextWall briefly shut down following instances of soyjak.party users flocking to it. Several worlds were created, most filled with braille pastes and the usual Soyjak markings. The site was restored on June 13th with

Welcome to TextWall
Sorry for the downtime

written in the center. Additional features included an Explore tab in the settings panel which lets users search for publicly listed worlds under a given username, and the lack of ability to see the total number of users site-wide.

Final closure

The original TextWall was closed indefinitely starting from late 2024, with the canvas being wiped and set to read-only by November.

As of 2025, textwall.cc is still accessible and the UI will still load, but you cannot click on any of the buttons and the canvas is greyed out.

Empty, read-only TextWall on November 20th, 2024
textwall.cc in 2025

TextWall clones

Uni's TextWall, now defunct

Though the original TextWall wasn't open source, several users have managed to create copies of the site.

A list of TextWall clones:^[3]

tw.2s4.me: Hastily scraped together by FP on June 25th, 2023 following a temporary shutdown of textwall.cc. It became a permanent replacement after 2024, when the original TextWall was closed for what seems to be the final time.
- It is located under FP's "2s4.me" domain, which also hosts [tbd].
- Tw.2s4.me(also known as TextWall 2s4) is different from the original textwall.cc(the original TextWall) in several ways, such as the fact that the canvas is infinite instead of having a border at 100,000 100,000.
- TextWall 2s4 was modeled after the 2023 version of textwall.cc, which has since received several updates that made it different from FP's version.
unitextwall.glitch.me: Created by Uni.
- *Went down with the closure of glitch.me in 2025.
corruptwall.glitch.me: tbd
- *Went down with the closure of glitch.me in 2025.
falling1textwall.glitch.me: Created by Falling1.
- *Went down with the closure of glitch.me in 2025.