Widgets on the desktop
Any module can live on the wallpaper. Widgets sit on a grid under the windows, and each one is a module the bar and the island already know — the same player, the same battery, the same weather. The desktop and the bar do not consult each other, so a module can be on one, on both or on neither, and the same module can be on the grid twice: a clock as a band and another as a dial.
The grid
Section titled “The grid”Everything sits on a grid, and nothing overlaps. A widget’s place is a column and a row, and the gap between two widgets is the gap between two windows. The grid fills the space under the bar with the same margin on all four sides, and stops short of the dock when the dock reserves its space; a floating dock draws over the bottom row.
A widget dropped on an occupied square goes to the nearest free one, or back where it came from if the board has no room. The widgets already there never move aside.
| Shape | Cells |
|---|---|
| Square | 2 × 2 |
| Card | 4 × 2 |
| Large square | 4 × 4 |
| Band | 8 × 2 |
The shapes are not one design at four sizes: each says a different amount, so a module offers only the shapes it has something to put in. Every module has a card.
Arranging
Section titled “Arranging”Right-click the wallpaper and choose Arrange widgets. The desktop comes in front of the windows over a clear view of the wallpaper, the grid is drawn, and a card of every module opens at the bottom, each drawn as its real face at the smallest shape it offers.
- Add — drag a piece from the card onto the grid; the squares it will land on are lit before you let go. A click on a piece puts it on the first free square instead. It lands at its smallest shape.
- Move — drag the widget.
- Change its shape — pull the handle in its bottom-right corner. The shape changes as the pointer crosses from one footprint to the next, never stretching in between. The mouse wheel over a widget steps through its shapes too.
- Remove — the ⊖ badge in its top-left corner, or drop the widget on the card.
- Give it a look of its own — click it (below).
The badge and the handle appear under the pointer and on the selected widget.
The card moves and grows. Drag it by any part that is not a piece, or by the circle on its top-left corner. The circle on the opposite corner resizes it in whole columns and rows, and the pieces flow into the new width; what does not fit scrolls, with the wheel or the bar in its right margin. Where you moved it lasts until arranging ends, and its size for the session.
Escape ends arranging, and so do a right-click on the grid and a click on the bar or on any other surface. It also ends by itself when the screen changes under it: another workspace, the special workspace, a window opening or one going full screen. The same mode opens from Settings → Desktop → The widgets → Edit, which closes the settings window meanwhile.
The right button
Section titled “The right button”At rest, the right button opens a menu where it was pressed:
| On | The menu |
|---|---|
| The wallpaper | Arrange widgets, New note, Wallpaper, Palette, Settings |
| A widget | Edit — arranging, opened on that widget’s card — and Remove |
| A note | Open, Edit and Remove |
Wallpaper and Palette open the island’s pickers (Palettes). The menu opens over the windows without lifting the widgets above them. The left button on the wallpaper does nothing but close a menu, and the menu has no keyboard: a click elsewhere closes it.
Each widget’s own look
Section titled “Each widget’s own look”Click a widget while arranging and a card opens beside it — to its right, its left or under it, wherever there is room.
| On the card | |
|---|---|
| Shape | The shapes the module offers, drawn as footprints — the same choice as the corner handle |
| Face | Modern or Analogue |
| Style | Capsule, Accent, Outline or No capsule |
| The slider | How solid the capsule is, 20 to 100 %, with a button that puts it back |
| Remove | Takes the widget off |
A note and a photo draw their own paper and picture, so neither has a Style or a slider, and a note has no Face. A photo’s card holds its Picture instead, and a print’s its Caption too (Photos).
The first tile under Face and under Style is Default, marked with a dot: it follows the desktop’s own setting, and a widget keeps following it until you pick something else. The line under the styles says what the widget is wearing. The card closes on a click on the wallpaper, and when a drag starts.
Settings → Desktop → The widgets holds what every widget follows by default: Face, Style and Background, the opacity.
| Style | What it draws |
|---|---|
| Capsule | The island’s black ground with a hairline edge |
| Accent | The colours turned inside out, with the accent as the ground |
| Outline | The edge alone, over the wallpaper |
| No capsule | The contents straight on the wallpaper |
Outline and No capsule shadow the type so it reads on the picture. With the background lowered, the wallpaper shows through blurred.
The ground is the island’s black and everything else is the palette, so every widget repaints with the wallpaper. Warnings keep their fixed colours — a battery in the red is red in every palette — and the GitHub wall keeps GitHub’s grey to green. There is no palette per widget.
Two themes
Section titled “Two themes”Modern is a figure with a caption; Analogue draws each module as an object, read by where something is rather than by a number. Either one is a choice per widget.
Modern lays every widget out on the same grid — the mark top left, the name top right, the reading along the bottom — so a wall of them reads as a set, and a bigger shape is the same widget saying more: a card fills in the right, a large square the middle. The player’s sleeve, the month, the GitHub wall and a photo are drawn whole rather than as a reading. Analogue keeps the figure small under the object on a square and puts the words beside it on a card.
| Module | Shapes | Analogue draws |
|---|---|---|
| Clock | square, card, band | a dial, which is also offered as a large square |
| Calendar | square, card, large | a leaf off a wall calendar |
| Weather | all four | the sky, with a thermometer beside it |
| Media | square, card, large | a record that turns while it plays |
| System | square, card, large | a gauge with a needle |
| Claude | square, card, large | a fuel gauge from E to F, without the large square |
| Battery | square, card | a cell that fills |
| Timer | square, card | an hourglass |
| Volume | square, card | a knob |
| Brightness | square, card | a fader |
| Network | square, card | arcs |
| Bluetooth | square, card | the Bluetooth rune |
| Updates | square, card | a parcel with the count on its label |
| Tasks | square, card, large | a clipboard |
| Pet | square, card | the pet on a line of ground |
| Games | square, card | a joystick |
| GitHub | square, card, band | the wall of contribution squares, in both themes |
| Notes | all four | paper, in both themes |
| Photo | all four | an instant print, or a strip of film on the band |
A widget switched to a theme with no face for its shape shrinks to the largest shape that fits inside the old one, so nothing grows into a neighbour.
Every widget is always drawn. With nothing to report it says so — “Nothing playing”, “No battery”, “No forecast” — and keeps its square; the only way for a widget to leave is Remove. The weather’s location, whose contributions the GitHub wall draws and how a note is written are in Settings → Desktop → Module settings, and the bar’s chips read the same settings.
On the calendar, a day with a dot has tasks due. Press it and the widget turns into that day’s tasks; it comes back when the pointer leaves it, or from the arrow. See Notes and tasks.
Every widget in both themes
Section titled “Every widget in both themes”Photos
Section titled “Photos”A photo widget holds a picture of your own, in any of the four shapes. In Modern the picture fills the widget edge to edge, with the widget’s own corners and no capsule. In Analogue it is an instant print — a paper border, a strip of tape along the top and a caption handwritten in its chin — leaning a little, each photo its own way; on the band it is a strip of film, the one picture running under three frames. Photo is a desktop widget only.
The picture is chosen while arranging, on the photo’s own card: Choose… opens a picker in the card’s place, drawn on the desk. Down its side are your pictures folder, the wallpapers, your downloads, your desktop and your home; a click on a folder goes into it, the arrow goes back up, and a click on a picture is the choice. It opens on the folder of the picture the widget already holds. It works with the pointer only, so there is no path to type and no search, and it lists PNG, JPEG, WebP and BMP files. The cross beside Choose… empties the widget.
The caption is typed on the card, under Caption, and written in the print’s chin as you type, forty characters at most. The field holds the keyboard while you type, and Enter, Escape or a click elsewhere lets it go. Only a print has a chin: a Modern photo and the film band carry no caption.
At rest, a click on a photo opens the picture in imv, floating over the windows. The picture is kept as a path, so it travels with the profile; a picture moved or deleted leaves the widget saying Picture not found until you choose another, and an empty one says No picture.
Notes on the edges
Section titled “Notes on the edges”A deck is notes stacked along the left, right or bottom edge, as tabs that peek out. At rest each note is a sliver of its colour; the pointer arriving brings the tabs out with their titles, and the tab under it slides the whole note out beside it. A click opens the note in the island, and the right button offers Open and Edit.
While arranging:
- drag the Notes piece from the card against an edge, and the newest note starts a deck there;
- drag a tab along its edge to reorder it, to another edge to move it, onto the grid to make it a square of its own, or onto the card to take it off;
- drag a note widget against an edge and it joins the deck there;
- drag the round grip before the first tab to slide the whole deck along;
- click a tab for the deck’s card: Where (left, right or bottom), Along the edge (Start, Middle or End) and Which notes, ticked on or off.
There is one deck per edge at most, and none on the top, which is the bar’s. A note is in one place at a time: putting it on an edge takes it off its square. A notes widget on a square shows one note — the newest, or the one picked under Which note on its card — and a click opens it in the island.
Decks hide under a full-screen window. Settings → Desktop → Module settings → Edges only on an empty workspace hides them whenever a window is open on the workspace, and brings them back when the last one closes.
Screens and sizes
Section titled “Screens and sizes”The widgets and the decks are on one screen: the one that carries the island, chosen in Settings → Displays → Arrangement → The island is on (see Displays). A widget is filed by its square and nothing else, so a second screen would draw the same widgets twice. Other screens get the dock and the bar without the island.
The squares are sized to fill the screen evenly, never smaller than a set minimum, so a smaller screen has fewer of them. A layout made on a bigger screen is pulled in to fit when it is drawn, the rightmost widgets placed first so the order holds, and the saved places are left as they were, so it comes back whole on the bigger screen. The three profiles that ship are laid out for 1920 × 1200.
What the desktop does not do is listed under Limitations.