The shell on small screens #

Four separate corners work on a large canvas, but take too much room on a phone. At widths of 760 pixels or less, the default layout combines them into a top bar and a bottom bar while preserving each corner's job.

Keep the useful controls in reach #

The top bar puts notifications first and the system group beside them. Notifications keep their own width; the clock and tray controls can scroll horizontally when they don't fit. The bottom bar keeps canvas tools at the left and the app strip right-aligned. Favorites and open apps scroll horizontally without hiding the tool selector.

Canvas tools become one button showing the active tool. Opening it presents a flat list: desktop selection, pan, search, rectangle selection, freeform lasso, drawing, Change layout, Overview, and Arrange windows. There are no nested tool submenus to navigate with a finger. Selecting a mode closes the list; Overview and Arrange perform their respective actions. Arrange is disabled when there are no open windows.

The shell uses one raised translucent surface per bar, with the child toolbar fills, shadows, and blur removed. This keeps a merged bar from becoming brighter simply because it contains more controls. Light-mode hover adds a very faint accent wash to the bar and a more visible accent-and-white highlight to the tool. Dark mode retains subdued pale highlights. The compact picker uses the same local glyphs as the desktop toolbar and search; simulated third-party app artwork stays unchanged.

Frame insets reduce from 24 pixels on larger screens to 12 pixels here. Popovers limit their width and available height to the viewport, and long contents scroll inside them. Materials and light explains which raised menus use accent hover and which ordinary panels keep white highlights.

Respect a customized frame #

Automatic merging is conditional. The top bar is used only while Notifications remains at its default corner and the Clock, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sound, Battery, Power group remains at the top right in that order. The bottom bar requires both Canvas tools and Apps to remain in their default corners.

Untouched older four- or five-control default groups migrate to this six-control order. Bluetooth joins immediately after Wi-Fi, so those layouts still qualify for the merged top bar. Explicit placements, groups, and hidden choices remain intact; see saved state.

Changing one of those arrangements through Change layout keeps the chosen attachments instead of rebuilding a default mobile bar over them. Individual controls and frame groups still adapt to their available width, and side groups scroll vertically. The compact canvas tool picker remains available at the small-screen breakpoint.

Responsive presentation is calculated from viewport size; it isn't a separate saved layout. Moving or grouping attachments is saved normally. Search, window switching, and the window focus view can hide controls independently of screen size.

Implementation #

FrameShell decides whether default corners can merge. FrameShell styles and PlacedWidget styles build the bars. CanvasTools owns the flat picker, and LauncherDock styles keep the app strip right-aligned and scrollable.