Getting Started

A Tour of the Interface

A Tour of the Interface

Three regions: a sidebar on the left, the content area, and a narrow rail down the right edge. The rail is always there: your avatar, Otis where it is licensed, and (for admins) the wrench sit at the top of it. Notifications are the Notifications channel in Chat, in the sidebar. On a page it carries that page’s own actions below them.

The regions

On a phone, or any window narrower than 1024 pixels, there is no right rail. Your avatar, Otis and the wrench move to the right end of the top bar, and the page’s or space’s buttons become a bar along the bottom of the screen. When there are more buttons than fit in one row, an up arrow at the end of the bar shows the rest; tap it again, or anywhere outside the bar, to put them away.

The sidebar

A switcher sits at the top of the sidebar. Its tree icon (the tooltip says Content tree) shows the tree described below. Chat lists your conversations: your notifications, a direct message with yourself, and, where Chat is part of your licence, Threads, your starred channels, the channels you have joined and your direct messages. While the tree is showing, a dot on Chat means something new has arrived there for you; opening Chat clears it. The sidebar comes back on the side you left it on, for you, on each device.

With the content tree showing, the sidebar changes with where you are. There are three states:

• Nexus list. Section header reads Nexus. Lists every nexus you can see.
• Inside a nexus. Section header reads Spaces. Lists that nexus’s spaces.
• Inside a space. Section header reads Content. Shows the page tree: click a chevron to expand a branch, drag items to reorder or renest them.

Each header has a + button that creates the thing it names. The breadcrumb above shows your path (nexus / space / page) with a back arrow. Hover it to expand the full path including folder ancestors.

Collapse the sidebar with the toggle at its top or ⌘\.

When a title does not fit

Deeply nested items have less width for their title than top-level ones, so a long title can end in an ellipsis. Two ways to read it:

• Widen the sidebar. Drag its right-hand edge, where a small grip appears under your pointer. The width is remembered on this device. Double-click the edge to go back to the standard width. From the keyboard, tab to the edge and use the left and right arrow keys, or Home to reset. It only ever gets wider than the standard width; to give the space back to the document, collapse the sidebar.
• Hover the title, or tab to it. A title that is cut off shows the whole of it in a small panel beside the row. A title that already fits shows nothing.

The tiles and rows on a space, a folder, a nexus’s Documents or a page’s list of children work the same way: hover or tab to a cut-off title, including a row you expanded under a tile, to read the whole of it.

On a phone or a narrow window the sidebar opens as a full-width panel instead, so there is no edge to drag.

Search

Click the magnifier beside the wordmark, or press ⌘K. A modal opens with a Search pages, spaces and messages… field. It needs at least two characters. Results are grouped into Spaces, Pages and Messages, with Recent shown before you type. Arrow keys move, Enter opens.

The user menu

Click your avatar, at the top of the right-hand rail:

Notifications

Your notifications are in your Notifications channel, the first row of the sidebar’s Chat list. Its number counts the notifications you have not read; click it to open the channel, where each notification is a card you can open, unwatch, pin or delete. The list also holds a direct message with yourself, under your own name with you beside it: a channel only you can read. See Being told what changed.

Admins also get a wrench icon at the top of the right rail, below their avatar, which opens the admin panel.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ⌘/ for the built-in shortcuts window. On Windows and Linux, Ctrl works everywhere ⌘ is listed.

The first press of Tab on any page shows Skip to content. Press Enter on it to go straight to the page, past the sidebar.

Global, anywhere in the app:

On a page:

While editing: