Apps and the bar

Seven apps make up your LifeOps. Each one is a kind of thing you keep, along with the page you keep it on.

There is no switch that turns an app off. Each app's page under Apps in Settings opened with one for a morning, and it went the same day: an app you do not want in front of you comes off the bar on the Menu bar page, and that is the whole of it. An app off the bar keeps its page, its address in a browser and its picture on the Apps page, and everything in it is where you left it. Leaving the bar covers it.

The bar holds the apps you choose in the order you choose, and Apps stands at the end of every bar. Apps never comes off, so the apps you left out are always one press away.

There are two bars, one per kind of screen. The phone app and a browser narrowed to phone width draw the bar along the bottom, each app an icon with its word under it. A wide browser window draws its bar as the row of words across the top. Either bar holds up to twelve apps, and each is arranged on its own. The phone app keeps Apps pinned at the right edge of its bar, so the press that reaches every other app never slides out of view.

A LifeOps nobody has rearranged starts with Journal, Day, Tasks and Goals on both bars, in that order, Journal first. The wide window's row follows the phone's bar until you arrange it on its own, and from then on the two are separate.

A bar with more apps than its width fits slides sideways under your finger or wheel, so no word is cut off and none wraps to a second line.

Fewer than the bar holds is a real answer. Take an app out and the apps that were after it move up a slot, and you can empty a bar down to Apps on its own.

Any app can come off a bar and stay on. A bar of Goals, Events and Notes is yours to make, and Journal, Day and Tasks are then reached from the Apps page.

The Apps page is a grid of the apps you run, each drawn as its picture with its name beneath, and pressing one opens it. The last press on the bar opens the page, on the phone and in a browser alike, and in a browser it also answers at the address /apps.

Four fit across a phone and more across a wide window. The order is always Journal, Day, Tasks, Goals, Events, Notes. Each app is a pale sage square with its picture drawn in sage. There are no switches and no slot numbers on the page, since arranging is done in Settings.

The apps that came with LifeOps are green. An app that an extension adds, such as Money or Photography, is blue, so you can tell an add-on from the core at a glance.

After the apps come two tiles of another kind, in a pale yellow-green because they are not apps. Guide opens this guide, and Config opens Settings. On the phone, Guide opens this guide in the phone's browser at the web address your LifeOps names, and a LifeOps that names none draws Config alone.

The foot of the Apps page is a wide box reading Quick Capture Journal & Tasks with a microphone beside it, on the phone and in a browser alike. Either takes one thing. Type it and press Enter, or the arrow in the box, and the AI reads the words and files them as a task or as a journal entry on today. A task is your own words with the lead-in taken off and the first letter capitalised, so need to get groceries becomes Get groceries; nothing is reworded, and an answer that strays from what you typed files the line as typed. A journal entry keeps every word. The sentence that decides is on the AI page under Quick Capture, Journal or Task decision, where it can be changed. A line under the box then says where it went, Filed in Tasks or Filed in Journal. The word opens that app on the thing it just filed: the page scrolls to that row and tints it for a few seconds, so what you wrote is picked out rather than somewhere down the list. In a browser, Shift and Enter break the line instead of sending; on the phone, the keyboard's Send key sends.

The microphone records in place. One press starts a take, the tile goes a warm red, and a disc behind the microphone grows and shrinks with your voice. A second press stops the take and sends it. The rest of the page stays still. A recording is filed as a journal entry the moment it lands, since its words are not known yet, and the line under the box reads Listening until they are. Once the write-up has the words, they are sorted the way typed ones are, a task is made from them and the entry is taken back, or the entry keeps the recording and the transcript, and the line says which.

With AI off, the box reads Quick Capture Journal and everything typed or spoken becomes a journal entry. A browser that refuses the microphone gets the line The microphone isn't available. and the box still works.

The phone's microphone records the way the Journal's voice memo does, and the take goes up the same way. A phone that refuses the microphone gets the same line, and the box still works.

Settings has a Menu bar row, and it opens a page titled Menu bar. The page is two drawings, one per bar, each with the apps that are not in it beneath, and under both the choice of home page. The same page is in a browser and in the phone app, and the two name their cards differently.

The first card, Phone in a browser and On the phone in the phone app, is the strip from the bottom of the screen: the apps in it as tiles in slot order, one dashed empty slot after them while the strip has room, and then Apps, which is drawn dimmer because it never moves. A slot holding an app shows that app's tile, the same tile as on the Apps page. Past five tiles the strip wraps onto a second line, so every slot is always in view.

The second card, Desktop in a browser and In a wide window in the phone app, is the row of words from the top of a wide browser window: the apps in it as words in slot order, then Apps dimmed. One dashed empty slot the width of a word stands after the last of them while the row has room, and at twelve there is none. The strip wraps onto a second line when the words outgrow it, so every slot is always in view.

Under each strip, Other apps holds the tiles of the apps that are on and not in that strip, in the order Journal, Day, Tasks, Goals, Events, Notes. An app can be in both bars, in one, or in neither.

Arranging is dragging, and a drag stays inside its own strip. In a browser you drag a tile or a word with the mouse. On the phone you press and hold it until it lifts, then drag it.

• Dropping an app from Other apps onto an empty slot puts it there.
• Dropping it onto a slot that holds an app swaps them, and the app that was there goes back to Other apps.
• Dropping a slot's app onto another slot moves it there, and the apps between shift over, which is how you set the order.
• Dragging a slot's app down onto Other apps takes it out of the bar, and the slots after it move up one.

Every drop saves at once, and the page redraws from what the server answers, the bar on your own screen included. The slot under your finger or pointer is marked while an app hovers over it.

The keyboard does the same in a browser. Each tile takes focus. On an app in the bar, the left and right arrows move it a slot and Delete takes it out. On an app under Other apps, Enter or a plain click puts it in the first empty slot, and with every slot taken the line under the strip reads The bar is full. On the phone, a screen reader offers the actions Move left, Move right, Remove and Add to bar on each tile, and reads a tile as Journal, slot 1 of 4, Journal, slot 3 of 12 or Notes, not in the bar.

Both bars are stored on your account rather than on the machine you set them on. The surface you make the change on redraws its own bar straight away. The other one catches up on the next page a browser loads, and the next time you bring the phone app to the front.

A change the server will not make leaves the drawing where it was and shows you the server's own words under the strip. The sentences it answers with call an app a module, and these are the four you could run into.

• The bar holds 12 modules. — asking the phone's bar for a thirteenth slot.
• The wide row holds 12 modules. — asking the wide window's row for a thirteenth.
• A module can only hold one slot. — asking for the same app in two slots of one bar.
• Notes is switched off, so it cannot be in the bar. — asking for a slot for an app that is off.

The page is arranged to keep you clear of all four: each strip has only as many slots as its bar holds, an app is one tile that can only be in one place in a strip, and an app that is off is not on the page at all.

Two other lines come from the app rather than from the server. A change that never reached it reads That didn't save. Try again. A change that landed with no answer coming back reads That went through, but the answer didn't. Reload to see where it stands.

At the foot of the Menu bar page is the choice of home page. In a browser it is a card titled Home page holding a dropdown of the apps that are on, and the Apps page after them, with the one LifeOps opens on showing. In the phone app it is Opens on, the apps that are on as small pills with the home page filled in. Both offer the Apps page after the apps. Pick another and it is the home page from then on, on both surfaces.

The phone app starts on the home page. In a browser, the bare address of your LifeOps takes you there, and a bookmark to any other page still goes where it says.

A LifeOps nobody has chosen for opens on the Journal. Switch the home app off and the home goes back to the Journal, or to the first app in the phone's bar when the Journal is off too.

The server refuses a home page that is switched off with Notes is switched off, so it cannot be the home page., which the page keeps you clear of by listing only the apps that are on.

Dragging an app's tile out of a slot on the Menu bar page takes it off that bar, and the app is then reached from the Apps page or, in a browser, at its own address. That is the one way an app leaves, on both bars. There is no switch that turns an app off: each app's page under Apps in Settings opened with one for a morning, and it went the same day.

Apps in Settings has one row per app that has something to set, in the order Journal, Tasks, Goals, then MCP and Sleep, then any app an extension brought with a settings page. A row opens the app's page, headed by the app's name, with what the app lets you set about itself. Day, Events and Notes have nothing to set and no row. Settings covers each page.

Your work is untouched either way: every note, goal and event is still stored and still comes back in search.

An app off the bar opens from its picture on the Apps page, the way it would from a slot.

In a browser each app also answers at an address of its own, so a bookmark works whether or not the app holds a slot. Journal is at /journal, Day at /day, Tasks at /tasks and Goals at /goals. Events answers at /chapters and Notes at /documents, which are the older names for those two.

Links from the rest of the app go on working. A note opened from search, a task opened from the Day and a goal opened from a task all open as they always did, whether or not the app holds a slot.

Search, Chat and Settings stay where they have always been, in the top corner, and none of the three takes a slot on the bar. The magnifier opens search, the bubble opens Chat, and the gear opens Settings. In a browser the corner is on the page title's line at phone width, and in the row across the top of a wide window.

Those three are about the whole app rather than one part of it, which is why they are corner icons rather than apps you could take off the bar. Search covers where that corner is on each surface. The Config tile on the Apps page is a second way to Settings.

Settings still holds your account and your timezone, your life areas and their colours, the AI switches, your statuses and your goal kinds, and this guide. Rearranging the bar changes none of that.

The seven apps come with LifeOps. An instance can also install an extension, which is a separate piece of software its owner chose, and an extension brings one or more apps of its own. An extension's app appears on the Apps page with its own picture and name, takes a slot on the bar when you put it there, has a page under Apps in Settings when it brought settings of its own, and answers at its own address in a browser, exactly as the seven do.

What an extension's app records shows up on the Day under its date, in the untimed band with the app's picture beside it, and pressing it opens the app.

Three extensions have pages of their own in this guide: Ideal Year, Retirement and Following. Each page applies only when your instance installed that extension.

An instance with no extension installed shows nothing about them anywhere: no row, no picture, no address. Installing one is done by the instance's owner outside the app, and takes a deploy.