1.6.7
Settings gets a navigator instead of a landing page. On a phone it used to open on a grid of fifteen cards, and every pane was two taps away with a Back button between you and the next one, which is a poor trade when the thing you came to do takes one switch. There is now a toolbar of icons across the top, the shape a preferences window has always used, and it reaches any pane in a single tap from any other. On a desktop the same destinations are a grouped list down the side, and which one you get depends on the width of the window rather than the machine it is on. The search that only the entry page used to have follows you everywhere, each pane now says what it is currently set to under its own title, and the coloured mark that made a pane findable in a list of fifteen is on both layouts. Elsewhere, About and What's New stop opening on half a screen of introduction, and What's New folds the release it is describing so you can see its shape before reading its argument.
10 changes in this release
Highlights
- 01
One navigator for Settings, on a phone and on a desktop
The phone layout was a dashboard of cards that led into a pane and a Back button that led out of it, so moving between two panes cost three taps and a screen you did not want to see again. It is now a toolbar of icons over labels along the top, which is where a preferences window has kept its sections for as long as there have been preferences windows: every pane is one tap from every other, and the strip scrolls rather than shrinking fifteen destinations until none of them are readable. On a wider window the same destinations are a list down the side, grouped under headings. Both are the same navigator, and which one appears is decided by the width of the window, so a desktop window dragged narrow gets the toolbar for the same reason a phone does.
- 02
Search reaches every pane, from every pane
Searching settings used to be something you could only do before you opened one, because the field lived on the page you left behind. It is now part of the navigator: on a desktop it sits above the list, on a phone it is a button in the toolbar that opens the field over the title. Matching filters the navigator itself rather than producing a separate list of results, the pane you have open stays in reach even when it is not a match, and a search that matches nothing leaves the full list standing and says so instead of emptying the only way you have of getting anywhere.
- 03
Every pane says what it is set to
The phone dashboard's best idea was that each card reported its own state: Dark, 80 percent, Passkey set, the current time. That is worth more than a list of names, and it did not deserve to go with the screen that carried it. The line now sits under the pane's title, where it describes the pane you are actually in and updates as you change it, and it is there at every window size rather than only on a phone. Each pane also keeps the coloured mark it had on that dashboard, which is what makes one of fifteen findable without reading all fifteen.
- 04
About and What's New open on the content
Both panels are reached from the same menu and neither agreed with the other about what a panel looks like. About opened on a large logo, a large title and a paragraph before anything you could act on; What's New opened centred, which is the shape of an alert rather than of a document. They now share one heading strip: a small mark, the title, and the facts as chips on a single line. What's New also folds the release it is describing, since a note with five highlights of a paragraph each is several screens of prose. The summary shows three lines with the rest one click away, highlights are titles until you open one, and the full change log sits behind its own tab with its count on the control. Nothing was cut, only folded.
Everything in this release
New3
- Settings has one navigator at every width: a scrolling toolbar of icons across the top in a narrow window or on a phone, and a grouped list down the side in a wider one. Any pane is one tap or click from any other.
- The pane's current setting is reported under its title, live: the theme, the volume, the time, the chain, whether a passkey is set.
- Settings search is available from inside any pane. It filters the navigator itself, keeps the open pane reachable, and leaves the full list in place when nothing matches.
Improved5
- Settings chooses its layout from the width of its own window rather than the device, so a narrow window on a desktop gets the touch layout and a wide one always shows the list.
- Settings takes the accent colour chosen in Appearance, so picking one is visible in the window you pick it in.
- About and What's New share one heading strip and one set of controls, and both start at the content rather than below a screen of introduction.
- What's New folds a long release: the summary clamps to three lines, highlights open one at a time, and the full change log is behind a tab that carries its own count.
- App marks in a navigation rail sit on the rail itself rather than on a white tile, and the accent behind a rail runs in from its outer edge across the full height.
Removed2
- The phone-only Settings dashboard and the drill-down it required. Its live status line moved to the pane title, where it describes the pane you are in.
- The coloured bar across the top of each index card in Stocks. The figure below it already said the same thing.