Websites in a panel
A page under its own icon, kept as you left it: the panel's bar, its ⋯ menu, its keys, and every setting a link carries.
Click a link’s icon and the page is there, in a panel hanging under that icon. Click anywhere else and the panel goes away, with the page still open behind it: the next click on the icon brings it back where you left it, scrolled where you left it, signed in as whoever it was signed in as.
That is the difference between the panel and a browser tab. A tab is somewhere you go; the panel is something you glance at.
The panel
It starts phone-sized, 390 × 760. Drag any edge and it grows, and the size is remembered on that link. Panel size in the editor offers three named sizes and a custom one:
| Size | Points |
|---|---|
| Phone | 390 × 760 |
| Tablet | 820 × 900 |
| Desktop | 1200 × 800 |
| Custom | Whatever you drag it to, or type |
Escape or ⌘W closes it. Closing a panel does not end the page, unless the link browses privately or is set to reload every open.
The bar at the top
Left to right: back and forward, home (back to the shortcut’s own address, for a page you have clicked three links into), the address field, and reload. At the right sit the things that only appear when they apply: the account’s mark, a downloads arrow while anything is arriving, and the ⋯ menu.
The bar takes the page’s own colour, so a site with a dark theme gets a dark bar.
The address field searches or takes an address, the way a browser’s does. Below it, when a site has opened a second page, a tab strip: the first tab is the shortcut’s own page and cannot be closed, since closing it is closing the panel. Tabs are one chain per shortcut and are not kept between opens.
In the bottom-left corner, the address under the pointer, the way a browser’s status bar says where a link goes.
The ⋯ menu
Above the line, the things that happen now:
- Open in a Panel, Open in a Window, Open in Your Browser. Choosing one moves the page there and keeps the choice for next time. Handed to a browser, it hands over where the page has got to, not the address it started from.
Below the line, Shortcut Settings: the same choices as the editor, each taking effect on the page in front of you as you choose it. Session, Size, Browser Agent, Page Appearance, Zoom, Links That Open a New Window, Block Ads and Trackers, Reload Every Open, Keep Playing When Closed, and (in a window) Always on Top. Last, Edit Shortcut…
Every setting a link carries
Each of these sits in the shortcut’s editor, and each starts at Default, which follows the app’s own setting rather than a value frozen when you made the shortcut.
Page appearance. System, Light, Dark, or Dark, even where the site has none, which inverts a site that has no dark theme of its own.
Page zoom. From 50% to 300%, in the steps a browser uses. ⌘+ and ⌘- change it on the page and it is kept here; ⌘0 goes back to 100%.
Links that open a new window. Where a link marked for a new window goes: in the same page, in a new window, or in your browser. A window a page opens by itself, to sign you in, always gets one.
Browser agent. What the page is told you are browsing with: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Safari on iPad, Safari on iPhone, or a custom string. Some sites send a different layout depending on the answer, and the iPhone agent is a fast way to make a cramped site fit a phone-sized panel.
Panel size or Window size, as above.
Keep playing when closed. Sound carries on after the panel closes and the page is kept for as long as it does. The icon wears a dot while it plays.
Reload every open. Opens at the link’s own address each time and fetches it again, rather than showing the page as you left it. What a board or a dashboard wants.
Ads and trackers. Blocked by default, from the EasyList and EasyPrivacy lists that ship with the app and are refreshed with each update. Ads inside a video player still play, and a few sites need blocking turned off to work at all, which is why it is a switch per link. A link that opens in your browser is your browser’s business.
What the page can do
Find with ⌘F, in a bar under the address rather than over the words it is looking for. ⌘G and ⇧⌘G walk the matches, and the field turns red when there are none.
Downloads arrive as they do in a browser. Settings › Ask where to save downloads decides between a save panel every time and straight into your Downloads folder. The arrow beside the address lists what has arrived this run and opens any of it.
Print with ⌘P.
A camera or a microphone is asked for by the page, once, and the answer is remembered for as long as the app is running. So is a decision to go past a certificate that could not be trusted, and a name and password typed for a site. None of it is written to disk, and a private page keeps none of it at all.
Where a page opens instead
A link does not have to open in the panel. See Windows for a window of its own, and the Opens in row in Shortcuts for handing it to your browser.