The ring & list mode

What it is. The ring — a wheel of your apps that blooms under your finger — is the core of Zenith. Press and hold the empty sky (your home screen) and the ring opens around your fingertip; slide onto a star and lift to open it. This page covers how the ring opens, how it looks, and the text alternative called list mode.

#How the ring opens and closes

The gesture. Touch an empty spot and hold. After a short pause the ring blooms under your finger. Without lifting, slide onto any star. Lifting over an app opens it; lifting over a folder drills into its ring, unless the folder is a ritual, which fires everything inside. To fold a ring shut, trace your line back into the spot it grew from.

Tune the pause. How long you hold before the ring opens is Settings › rings & effects › hold delay. The default is 220 ms, and the slider runs from 120 to 450 ms. A shorter delay makes the ring snappier but easier to open by accident; a longer one is more deliberate.

#Shaping how the ring looks

All of these live under Settings › rings & effects:

• "orbit radius" — how wide the ring of stars sits around your finger, in dp. Default 150, range 80–280. A smaller radius keeps everything close to your thumb; a wider one spreads the stars out.
• "star size" — the drawn size of each star, in dp. Default 26, range 18–36.
• "labels" — when app names show under the stars: "off", "on hover" (only the star under your finger), or "always". Default is "on hover".
• "haptic feedback" — a gentle vibration as you move across the ring. On by default. This is the ring-wide switch; a single star can also carry its own haptic pattern in its editor.

#List mode — a text alternative to the rings

What it is. List mode swaps the rings of stars for cascading text panels. It runs on the exact same stars and the same slide gesture — only the look changes. Instead of orbits, each folder is drawn as a stack of text rows.

Behavior. In list mode, the panel under your thumb gets a faint backing so it stays readable over a busy wallpaper. Folder, widget, shortcut, and link rows carry a small trailing glyph. Resting on a folder row opens its child panel, paced by the same hold-delay slider as above.

Switch modes. Open the settings sheet and use the switch at the very top: "✦ ICON MODE" for the rings of stars, "☰ LIST MODE" for the text panels. Icon mode is the default.

#See also.

The ring engine · Hold to bloom the ring · Slide to launch · Skies, usage-as-light & list mode