The bloom

The bloom is the rings that open where you touch. It grows outward from your finger and shows your tasks as stars — each star one task — on rings.

#Opening it

How you open it depends on "mode", at settings › "touch" › "mode":

• "hold & drag", the standard — touch and hold. A small glow grows under your finger while you wait, and after the hold time the bloom opens. See Hold & drag.
• "tap & place" — one tap opens it, and it stays open. See Tap & place.

It opens centred exactly where you touched, with a spark, a small buzz and a sound. The rings grow out over a moment. For the first moments the stars can't be chosen yet, so a fast slide doesn't hit the wrong one.

If the sky is split into regions — parts of the screen with their own bloom — it opens in the region you touched and shows only that region's top-level tasks. See Regions.

#Rings and orbits

A ring is one level of the bloom: the tasks inside one place, laid round a centre. An orbit is how far out from that centre a star sits.

You see one faint circle for each orbit in use, plus the base ring, and a dot at the centre. An empty ring says "slide to ✛ to add a task".

Every task keeps its own angle and orbit. A new task added from the add sheet takes the next of the six starlight colours, and the ring is spaced evenly round again. That spacing moves only the tasks nobody placed by hand. A star you placed keeps its spot. See Move a task.

#Going deeper

Rest on a node — a task that holds others — and its own ring opens on top, centred on it. The node you came from stays drawn. A return marker — a small ring with a chevron — sits at the earlier ring's centre.

Slide back into it and the top ring folds shut. The phone's back button does the same, one ring at a time. See Nodes & gates.

#Completing

• In "hold & drag", slide onto a star and lift. It goes out in a burst — the supernova — and is marked done.
• In "tap & place", the first tap chooses a star and a second tap on it completes it.

Do the same on a done star and it reopens. Completing shows an undo pill. A star that carries a card opens its card instead. See Complete & reopen.

#Off the edge

A ring opens exactly where you touched and is never pulled back onto the screen. A big bloom can reach past the edges. Pinch to zoom out, as far as 0.15×, and in to 4×. See Full bloom & pinch.

#Closing it

• In "hold & drag" the bloom lives while your finger is down. Lift anywhere but a star and it closes, leaving a fading ghost.
• With "latched back" on, at settings › "ease", it stays open without holding. See Ease.
• The phone's back button closes it one ring at a time.
• Draw a big Z, top to bottom, and everything closes. That Z is a built-in talisman — a when-this-do-that rule — that you can switch off. See Talismans.

#The comet trail

A trail of light follows your finger from the moment you touch the sky until you let go, in your accent colour. It thins and fades toward its tail. See Motion & sound.

#Only in the bloom view

"list" and "matrix" show the same sky without the bloom. See The viewer panel.

#Its size

settings › "layout & size" › "bloom size" sets how far the rings reach: 150 dp to start, from 80 to 900 dp.

#See also.

Hold & drag · Tap & place · The dock buttons · Reading a star