The wall display

The wall display is a web address and a screen in the phone and tablet app. Open /wall in a browser, or Wall in the phone app's menu, on a tablet, phone or old laptop. Stand it somewhere people walk past and leave it running. There is no device to buy.

Every plan has a wall, in every kind of workspace. A family workspace gets the household's wall, your own workspace gets a desk wall, and a team workspace gets an office wall. Which wall you get has what each plan includes.

If typing a path into a tablet screwed to the wall does not appeal, Wall display is also in the command palette, in a family workspace under More on the family hub, and in a team workspace from Who's in on the Team hub's This week and Show on the office TV on Workload. Its short address, /wall, opens the same screen.

Getting to the wall#

In any workspace the wall is one tap from anywhere:

• Wall in the sidebar (on a phone, in the menu), or GW on a keyboard.
• Long-press the installed app's icon and choose Wall.
• On a tablet or a TV, type themarginapp.com/wall or scan the code under Look and settings, Put the wall on another screen. Sign in once and the address opens the wall from then on.
• In the phone app, Wall is in the menu.

Leave the wall takes you back to the page you came from (or to Family when the wall was opened straight from a link).

Ask a grown-up's PIN to leave#

A wall is a screen the household put up on purpose, so it does not close on the first tap. When a grown-up has a wall PIN or pattern, leaving asks for it (choose a name first when more than one grown-up has one). A child's PIN never takes the wall down. When no grown-up has one, the wall asks one plain question: Leave the wall?

Each screen decides this for itself with Ask a grown-up's PIN to leave, in Look and settings (under Household on a browser wall). It is on unless someone turns it off. With it off, leaving only asks Leave the wall?, even when a grown-up has a PIN. Turning it off at the wall itself asks a grown-up's PIN first, so a child cannot switch it off and walk away. The same switch is in Settings > Wall screens, under the screen's Look and settings, on the web and in the phone app. Margin Intelligence and connected assistants can change it too, with set_wall_settings (exitPin). A phone's own wall always closes straight away, so the switch matters on tablets, TVs and browser walls.

Which wall you get#

The wall follows the workspace it is opened in.

A new family screen opens on Everyone today: the clock, the day's timeline and meals, and a lane for each person with two to five of their things for today, each with its drawing. Kids tap a chore in their lane to tick it. That is all the screen can do on its own, so there is no PIN or account to set up for each child: a job that needs a yes waits for a grown-up on their phone, as always. A screen that already had its own layout keeps it.

A desk or office wall offers the widgets every wall has plus its own (see Wall widgets). It never shows a household's chores, points, meals, kids or person pages.

Which companion it shows. A household's wall shows the household's companion, and a desk wall shows your own. An office wall is read by everyone who walks past, so it shows no companion until someone turns one on: open Look and settings and set Companion on this wall to On. The same switch takes it off a home or desk wall; Automatic goes back to what the wall's type says. It is that screen's own setting, in the browser and in the phone app.

On Free you can still set up a widget on that page, like which list it shows or what a countdown counts down to. Moving widgets, adding pages, web page tiles and saved templates come with Pro, Family and Team.

A Free screen that was showing a room the library no longer has opens on the workspace's own room instead (Everyone today at home, the desk for one person, the office for a team), so it never stops on an error.

Screens are counted across your whole account, the way seats are: every screen in every workspace the plan's owner owns shares the plan's places. So a Family plan's five cover the kitchen, the hallway and the desk in your own workspace together, and Team's are one for each seat across the team's workspaces.

A screen counts while it has checked in within the last 30 days, so a tablet left in a drawer frees its place by itself. The limit is checked when a screen is added, so a screen that is already set up keeps working.

Setting up a new screen#

The first time the wall opens on a device, nothing is saved yet. The wall shows behind a short question: give the screen a name (Kitchen tablet, Hallway, Living room TV), see how many of your plan's places are in use, then choose Set up this screen or Just look for now. Setting it up takes one place. Just looking uses no place, so opening the wall on a laptop to see what it looks like never uses up a screen. That device remembers the choice and does not ask again; Set up this screen in the wall's bottom corner brings the question back whenever you want it.

One device, one screen#

A screen is the device. If a tablet's browser is cleared, or someone else signs in on it, the wall arrives as a new screen and asks again. When your plan's places are full, the same question lists your screens instead, the one quiet the longest first: Is this Kitchen tablet?. Pick the screen it used to be and it comes back with its pages and look, and your count stays the same. If it is none of them, forget one in Settings, or just look.

See, preview and arrange your screens#

Settings > Wall screens, on the web and in the app (and from Family settings > Wall display on the web), shows every screen across your workspaces as it looks right now: a live preview drawn from that screen's own layout and theme, with its room, its workspace, when it was last seen, and how many of your plan's places are in use. A screen that is on says Showing now; one that has not checked in for 30 days says Not holding a place.

Every screen has one layout, in its own shape: wide for a TV or monitor, tall for a phone or a tablet standing upright. Edit layout opens the screen in the shape it last reported, and that is the one you arrange. A screen that has not opened yet is shown wide. If a tablet turns on its side, its widgets refit to the new shape by themselves, with nothing removed and nothing overlapping. A phone that opens the wall is its own screen, with its own name and its own layout, never a second view of another screen.

On a computer it is the same editor the wall has: add a widget, drag one to move it (onto another page too), pull any edge or corner to resize, undo, or apply a template. You can also drag a widget straight from Add a widget onto the page. While you hold it, the page shows where it will land and moves the others out of its way, and Escape puts it back. If the page is already full, the widget still lands where you let go, and whatever it covers moves on to the next page; the editor tells you where. The keyboard does the same: Tab to a widget, the arrow keys move it, and Shift with the arrow keys resizes it. Templates shows every room with small pictures of its pages, so you can see a layout before you use it. Above the screen, every page is a small picture under its category; each has a menu to Rename, Move left, Move right or Delete page, and you can drag one onto another to reorder them. Pages opens the same overview the wall has. A tall screen is arranged the way a phone wall reads it, one widget under the next. Add a widget opens beside the screen, so the page stays in view while you drag onto it. Cancel puts back the layout you opened with.

Changes save to that screen, one at a time, and it picks them up within a minute. While you keep editing, it checks every 30 seconds, so the rest of your changes show up sooner. Its theme and text size are under Look and settings, beside Layout at the top of the page. If someone else changes the same screen while you are editing, their change is kept and the editor opens the newest layout. On a phone, Settings puts Arrange this screen at the top, which opens the editor full screen in that screen's own shape (turn the phone sideways to arrange a wide screen at its largest), and keeps Cancel, Undo and Done in a bar along the bottom.

Change a screen's look from anywhere#

Every card in Settings > Wall screens has Look and settings. It opens the screen's own look panel, the one the wall shows, from any computer or phone: the theme, black for OLED, what happens at night, light mode, page turning, text size, the drawings, Units, refresh, the companion and the town for weather. A change saves on its own, says Saved. The screen updates within a minute., and the screen picks it up without anyone touching it. A change made on the screen shows up in Settings too, because both read the same copy.

From another device, a few choices read as what the screen does rather than what the device in your hand does. Same as this device becomes Follows the screen's own setting, since the theme it follows is the screen's own app's. Screen off at night is always offered (a screen that can't turn itself off goes black with a small clock instead), and automatic light mode says it turns on by itself on a small computer. A screen that has never opened starts with what you set here the first time it does. If two people change one screen at once, the last change of each setting wins and nothing else is lost. Unlocking the screen, leaving it, refreshing it now and putting it in kiosk mode are still done at the screen, because they are about that device in that moment.

A grown-up can rename a screen or give it a room there, and Forget one you no longer use. Forgetting deletes that screen's pages and frees its place; if it is still switched on, it asks again before it joins.

Set up a device#

Sign the device in with an account in the workspace (for a family wall, any account in the household). Then:

1. In a family workspace, every grown-up sets their own wall PIN on their row in Family, People. Approving a chore at the wall always asks for the approver's PIN, so a child who taps "Mom" meets Mom's keypad, not her approval queue.
2. Pin the browser to the page in the operating system: Guided Access on iPadOS, screen pinning on Android, or a kiosk-mode browser profile. The app is a tab and cannot lock the device it runs in.
3. Open the display once while you have signal, so it has something to show when the network drops.
4. Tap Enter wall mode. The display goes fullscreen and the address bar and tabs disappear. Hang the screen either way up: the wall lays itself out for portrait and landscape alike.

While wall mode is on, the same control reads Exit wall mode. On browsers with no fullscreen of their own (iPhones and iPads, mostly) the button is not shown at all.

The app on an Android tablet or TV#

An Android tablet from 7 to 13 inches, or an Android TV, makes the best wall there is, because the app can do what a browser cannot: fill the screen, stay awake, dim itself at night and ask before it comes down.

The layout follows the screen. A tablet draws each page as its table in portrait and in landscape alike, so a 7-inch tablet held upright is a wall, not a phone's stack. The type grows with the screen and with Theme and text size, Text size: Close, Across the room or Far, so it reads from the sink.

Kiosk mode. On a tablet or TV the wall hides the status bar and the navigation bar (swipe in from the edge to see them for a moment) and keeps the screen on.

• To leave, press and hold Hold to leave the wall, or use the Back button or gesture. Nothing closes straight away. If a grown-up has a wall PIN or pattern, the wall asks for one (choose a name first when more than one grown-up has one). A child's PIN never takes the wall down. If no grown-up has one, or the screen's Ask a grown-up's PIN to leave is off, it asks one plain question: Leave the wall? A desk or office wall has no PINs, so it always asks that.
• Offline, the wall cannot check a PIN, so it asks the plain question instead. A wall that cannot be left because the wifi dropped is worse than one a person standing at it can leave.
• In the editor, Back closes the editor first. Off the first page, Back goes to the first page before it asks to leave.

Night. Under Theme and text size, At night, with Dark chosen, the wall goes fully black at the hours you set, with a large, dim clock that drifts a little every minute and a half, and the screen's own backlight drops to almost nothing. The first touch only wakes it: it never taps a chore you cannot see. A woken wall stays at a low light for two minutes, then goes back to sleep. Screen off dims the wall and lets the tablet's own screen timeout turn the screen off instead, and Stay lit leaves it as it is. A phone never dims.

Android TV. The app appears in the TV's launcher with its own tile. A remote works the whole wall:

Every widget is a stop for the arrows, including the ones that only show something (the clock, the weather, meals, the House Cup). Any key wakes a wall that is asleep, and that key does nothing else.

The companion on the wall. Your household's companion lives on the glass of a tablet or TV wall, the same character and name as everywhere else, and it does what it does on the browser wall. It stands in the biggest free spot near the date, clear of every widget, button, the notch and the bottom bar, and it walks to a tile when there is something to say about it: it stands on the tile's top edge and never on what the tile shows. In the morning it says good morning once with the day's first event. Left alone for a few minutes it walks to whose turn it is or what is next and points. With reduced motion on, it appears where it is going instead of walking. On dark themes it wears a thin cream rim so it reads against the page.

Tap it to say hello. Stroke it back and forth and it enjoys it in its own voice (three quick strokes make it cheer). Flick it and it yawns. Hold it and it opens its notes:

• What's next?, Whose turn? and What's on the list? answer from what the wall already shows, and it walks to that tile and says so. They write nothing, so anyone can press them.
• Add to shopping and Ask me act as a person, so they ask Who's talking? first. Tap a name; a grown-up with a PIN or pattern proves it and the server checks it. Nothing is written until a name is chosen, and the item is added as that person. A household of one with no PIN is not asked. A child talks to Ask me as themselves, on the kids' companion; a grown-up needs a PIN or pattern to type to it here (the written answers stay open to everyone).

On a TV, OK is the tap and holding OK is the hold, and the notes are how a remote reaches the rest, including Ask me. To keep it off the wall, set Companion on this wall to Off under Look and settings, or turn the companion off in its own settings.

Pages, up, down and sideways#

The wall is a grid of pages. Sideways are categories (Home first, then whatever your household adds: Calendar, Kitchen, Kids, Notes). Up and down are that category's pages. Swipe to turn: sideways for the next category, up or down for the next page in this one. A page always fills the screen, so a swipe up or down is always a page turn.

The little map at the foot of the wall shows where you are: one mark per page, a column of marks per category, the page you are on inked in. Tap it to see every page at once, as small live pages on the table, with each category's name above its column. Tap one to go there. Escape, Back or spreading two fingers closes it.

The wall goes back to its first page after two quiet minutes.

A household wall that has never been arranged opens on Today at a glance, two pages in Home:

• Today is the home page. The time and the date are the masthead, with the weather drawn beside them and a countdown to the next big day. Under it, today as one ruled line from 7 AM to 9 PM (longer when the day starts early or ends late), the hours lettered above it and a needle at the time now; every event sits on the line with its time and the faces of who it is for. Then everyone's next job with a box for each of today's jobs, this week as a calendar leaf with birthdays circled by hand, today's meals with a drawing each, the grocery list and today's reminders.
• This week holds the next two weeks, this week's dinners, the chores and the birthdays coming up.

A desk wall opens on Desk: my day and an office wall on Team office. The front page and the page per person live on in the rooms The Morning Edition and The Household Spread (see Templates).

To have the wall turn its own pages, open the theme button and set Turn pages by themselves. It only turns while nobody is touching it, and it walks the grid in reading order.

Widgets#

Every block on a page is a widget: the clock, the weather, the timeline, this week, meals, the list, everyone's next job, and one for every part of Margin (chores, points, the House Cup, rewards, allowances, the week's meals, the calendar, habits, focus, timers, reminders, notes, sticky notes, checklists, boards, pinned drawings, Ask Margin, who's home, and web pages), plus widgets for a desk (the month's money, a journal prompt, the Mind) and for a team (workload, sprint, daily update, pacts, deadlines). Wall widgets lists them all, with what each one shows and what a tap opens.

Edit the wall#

Tap the ruler in the bottom-right corner (or Edit this wall in the menu) and enter a grown-up's wall PIN. When more than one grown-up has a PIN, their faces sit above the keypad: tap yours first. Only a grown-up with a wall PIN can edit.

A desk or office wall has no PINs. Edit wall asks one plain question and opens the editor for the person the screen is signed in as. On Free the same control opens the ready-made rooms instead: pick one and the wall shows its first page.

You can also press and hold anywhere on the pages for half a second to get there. The page turns into a layout table with its guides drawn in:

• Move a widget by dragging it. It lifts and follows your finger or the mouse, snaps to the grid, and the widgets in its way slide aside while you drag, or swap places with it. The spot it will land in is dashed. If there is no room right where you point, it takes the nearest free spot within one cell; if there is none, the spot shows red before you let go, and letting go there leaves everything as it was. On a touch screen, rest your finger a moment before you drag; a quick swipe still turns the page.
• Carry it to another page: hold it at the left or right edge of the screen, or over one of the page dots in the bar, and the wall turns the page after a moment. Let go there and it moves to that page. Letting go on a dot sends it to that dot's page straight away, without waiting for the page to turn. A dot that has no room for it shows red.
• Tap a widget to pick it. Only the picked one shows its tools: × to remove it, ••• for its size (S, M, L or Full) and its Settings (which note, which checklist, how many minutes, which web page), and a corner handle to resize it. While you pull, it says the size, and the preset's name when it matches one. The widgets around it move aside at their own size; none is shrunk.
• Add a widget opens on the right, beside the page. Search for one or pick a category, choose S, M or L if you want a size other than its usual one, then tap it or drag it onto the page and the others make room for it. It goes on this page if there is room (the gaps are closed if that makes room), otherwise on the next page that has room, and when every page is full, on a new page right after this one. The note says where it went, and Show takes you there. Adding never takes another widget off. A widget that is already on the page and not set up yet is picked out instead of added twice.
• Pages opens every page: add a page at the end of a category, add a category or one of the four ready ones (Calendar, Kitchen, Family, Notes), move a page, or delete one. Deleting asks first and names what is on the page: Delete page, keep widgets moves them to the page before it, Delete page and its widgets takes them too, and Undo stays up for 8 seconds.
• Undo takes back the last change, pages included, and turns back to the page it was made on. It keeps up to 50 steps while you go to Pages and back. Cancel puts back the wall you started with (it asks first when you changed something). Done keeps your changes.

The page dots stay in the bar while you edit, and a swipe or the arrow keys still turn the page when you are not carrying anything. While you edit, the wall does not pick up a change made somewhere else. If one was saved meanwhile, it asks: Keep mine or Use theirs.

With a keyboard or remote: Tab to a widget. Space or Enter picks it up, the arrows move it a cell at a time, Page Up and Page Down carry it to the page before or after, Enter puts it down and Escape puts it back where it was. Every step is read out ("Weather, column 5, row 1", or "No room there"). Without picking it up, the arrows move it, Shift and the arrows resize it, and Delete removes it. You arrange a screen in the shape it stands in. If it turns, the wall fits the same widgets to the other shape by itself: a widget you add shows there too, and if that shape has no room for it, it moves to a page of its own and the wall says so, so nothing is ever hidden.

Templates#

A template is a whole wall saved under a name: its pages, its widgets and where they sit. In edit mode, Templates lets you save this wall as a template, use one on this screen, rename, star, duplicate or delete them, and update one from this screen. The household's templates follow you to every screen, so you can set a wall up on the kitchen tablet and use it on the hallway TV. Using a template copies it onto the screen; changing that screen afterwards never changes the template.

Twenty-six rooms come built in and starred, each made for one place and composed edge to edge. A family wall offers all of them, a desk wall the eight Pro rooms and an office wall the eight team rooms.

• For a household: Today at a glance (the day, who does what, dinner), Out the door (the weather, the next hour, who has what), Family kitchen (tonight's table, a timer, the list), Jobs and rewards (chores with points), Kids room (my jobs and a drawing), Family planner (two weeks, birthdays, money), The Morning Edition (the household as a front page), The Household Spread (one person per column), Quiet hours (a big clock and photos for the evening) and Prayer and the day (prayer times beside the day, offered only with Muslim features on).
• For one person: Desk: my day, Deep work, Weekly review, Pro kitchen, Money desk, Habits and health, Studio wall and Agents at work.
• For a team: Team office, Daily update corner, Sprint room, Reception, Launch countdown, Meeting room, Remote team and Ops board.

The library shows what each room is for under its name. A room arrives set up: its board, sprint, checklist and note tiles start on this workspace's most active board, its first open checklist and its pinned or latest note, never a locked or sealed one. Pick another from the tile at any time. Each room is a copy like any template, so everything on it can be moved, resized or swapped afterwards.

The four categories (Calendar, Kitchen, Family and Notes) are not part of any room. Add one whole from Pages: Add the Calendar pages, and the same for the other three.

Web pages on the wall#

The web page widget shows any https page on the wall, live, for example a Home Assistant dashboard, a camera or the school's calendar. Tap it to open it full screen; Back to Margin stays on top. Only a grown-up can add one.

Some sites refuse to be shown inside another page. The wall checks first, and for those the tile says This page can't be shown inside the wall with an Open it button that opens the page in the browser instead. Only the site can change that answer; nothing on the wall can.

A page on your home network (an address only your home can reach) is opened straight from the screen, so it shows when the screen is at home.

When you open the wall from inside the app and it has a web page on it, the wall loads once more as its own page, which takes a second. A browser only lets the wall show other sites when it is opened as a page of its own.

Home Assistant#

Home Assistant refuses framing until you allow it. Add this to its configuration.yaml and restart it:

http:
  use_x_frame_options: false

Then sign in once on the wall: tap the tile, log in inside the full view and tick Keep me logged in. Home Assistant keeps that login in the screen's browser, just for pages shown inside the wall, so it stays through reloads. If the screen's browser later asks you to sign in again, tap the tile and log in once more, or use Open it directly on the pill.

For a screen that should never ask, Home Assistant can trust your home network instead of a password: add a trusted_networks auth provider with your home's address range (keep the homeassistant provider beside it so your own logins still work). It only applies when the screen reaches Home Assistant at its home address, not through a remote link, and it lets anyone on that network in, so use it only on a network you control. Home Assistant's authentication providers page has the details.

The Margin never sees or stores your Home Assistant password. You type it into Home Assistant's own page, and the login stays between that page and the screen.

On a phone#

A phone holds the wall in a hand, so it works like an app. Swipe sideways between pages; each page scrolls down. The bar at the bottom shows the page's name with a dot for each page; tap the name to see every page as a list of cards. The tools (Edit this wall, Look and settings, Refresh, Full screen, Leave the wall) are in the ••• menu.

Editing on a phone shows the page as one column. Each widget has a strip above it: drag the grip to move it, tap its size (S, M, L or Full) or ••• for its options, or ✕ to take it off. The card you hold follows your finger and the others make room as you go. Hold it near the top or bottom and the list scrolls. Reordering keeps every widget on its page and never changes the TV layout, so on a full page some orders do not fit. Then the card shows red, goes back when you let go, and a short note says why: make a widget smaller first. A drag that ends where it began says so too. Add opens a sheet of live widgets; the one you tap goes after the widget you picked, or at the end.

A note, checklist, board or countdown that nobody has set up asks its question right on the wall: pick one, or write a new note there.

Drawings beside things#

Each event, meal, chore, grocery item and reward on the wall carries a small drawing. The Margin picks it from the item's title, once, when you add or rename the item, and leaves it blank when nothing fits; a wrong picture is worse than none. To choose one yourself, pick a drawing for the item, or choose No drawing; your choice wins and stays when the title changes. Margin Intelligence and connected assistants can set it too. Titles that find no drawing are counted, and the most-missed ones decide which drawings are added next.

Look and settings#

Look and settings (in the ••• menu on a phone, the palette on a big screen) opens a level at a time. First come the things most people change: the theme, what happens at night, and three switches (black for OLED screens, turning pages by itself, and season and weather drawings). The wall's Town for weather sits at the foot of the sheet. Below them, Pages and navigation, Content and drawings, Motion and ambience, and Updates each open in place, and Household holds Ask a grown-up's PIN to leave (see Ask a grown-up's PIN to leave). Reset this screen to defaults puts it all back. Each widget's own options are in Edit wall. The same panel is in Settings > Wall screens for every screen, so you can change it from your phone or laptop (see Change a screen's look from anywhere).

Units on the wall#

The wall shows the temperature in its own Units, under Look→Units: Automatic, from where the wall is, Metric (°C) or US (°F). Automatic follows the time zone of the town you set for the weather, then the device's own region and time zone. A person's own Units setting does not change the wall, because the wall belongs to the house.

The same setting decides the clock on the prayer times widget: US reads 1:05 PM, metric reads 13:05. The widget's dial is a twelve-hour clock face either way, like the clock on your wall; only the times written on it follow this setting.

Season and weather drawings#

The wall can draw the season and the sky behind everything, in the same ink and wash as its other drawings: a few leaves in autumn, petals in spring, snow in winter, a warm haze in summer, and rain, snow, wind or sun from the weather outside, with wind drawn on a windy day as well as in fog. The season follows the wall's town, so south of the equator the leaves fall in April. They fall slowly and sparsely, never cover anything you tap, stop at night, rest in light mode (a slow screen would step them down the glass), and stay off when the device asks for less motion. Choose the season, the weather, both or neither, and a few or a little more, under Motion and ambience.

The household companion#

A companion lives on the wall for the whole household. It walks between the tiles without standing on them, says good morning with the day's first event, cheers whoever marks a chore done or ticks off the shopping list, stands by a kitchen timer in its last minute, and naps beside the clock at night. Tap it for a small note: What's next?, Whose turn? and What's on the list? answer at once in its note (asked in the first moment after a refresh, it says it is still reading the wall rather than guessing), Add to shopping opens the list, and Ask me opens its own sheet, which asks Who's talking? and then chats as that person (a grown-up confirms with their wall PIN or pattern), and Treats and wardrobe opens its care. Stroke it, with a finger or a mouse swept back and forth across it, and it is happy. Hold it (or right-click it, or press the menu key on a keyboard or remote) for its care: a treat from the household's jar and its wardrobe. Only the person whose companion it is changes what it wears: the wardrobe asks who you are and your wall PIN, then dresses your own companion, and a child dresses theirs after their own PIN. Its note never moves it, and it keeps to a free spot and never covers a button. On a tablet or TV in the app it greets on a tap, takes a pet and opens its note on a hold (see The app on an Android tablet or TV above); its care, its room's touches and the week's weather are on the browser wall for now. Choose which character it is under Look→Household. The details are in Themes and appearance.

What it carries for you, and its room#

When someone taps their face, the companion hands over what it is carrying for them, before their page: their last finished job, and any signed notes someone in the home left for them. Thanks tells the sender it landed. A person with a PIN sees theirs only after the PIN.

Tap the companion and choose its room to see the drawn house view: the room as your household has grown it, what it is doing there (a pot on when dinner is planned, the umbrella out when rain is likely, a nap once the chores are done), and the keepsakes from your book on the shelf. In the room it answers the same way: a tap and it greets you, a stroke and it is happy, a hold for its care. Press the shelf or the book to open what they hold. At night the same room sits dim beside the clock and still answers a touch: a tap and it stirs, a stroke and it is happy in its sleep, and neither wakes the wall. Hold it and the wall wakes into its care.

The Margin's mark#

The foot of the wall carries a small M and the words The Margin, quiet in the corner like a newspaper's imprint. At night they stay, very dim, and drift with the clock so nothing burns into the screen.

Each screen keeps its own look and layout#

The theme, black for OLED, text size, page turning and the arrangement of pages and widgets belong to the screen they were set on. The look and the arrangement are kept for that screen on The Margin's servers too (each screen is its own "wall device", and no other screen reads it), so Margin Intelligence and other assistants can arrange a wall when you ask, and the screen picks the change up within a minute. They stay through reloads, app updates and Reset and resync, and they never travel to another screen or room. To use one wall's arrangement somewhere else, save it as a template and use the template there. The household's chores, lists, meals and everything else still sync everywhere, as always. An assistant can arrange one screen for you too: see Assistants and the wall.

What it shows at a glance#

The pages only show what matters now: the time, the weather, each person's next job, today's meals, a few things on the list and the next events. The whole of anything is one tap away, in its sheet.

It shows a note only when a grown-up picks it or tags it for the wall, money only as bars, rings and percentages until a grown-up enters their wall PIN, and never anything in the Vault or behind a PIN lock.

It fits the screen it is on#

The pages are not shrunk to fit. Each one reads the shape of the screen:

• Landscape (a tablet on its side, a monitor, a TV): columns across the page under the time.
• Portrait (a screen hung tall): the time spans the width and the parts stack in bands.
• Small screens (800 by 480, 1024 by 600): the glance only, the time and each person's next job.
• A phone in your hand: one column you scroll, page by page.

What it reads#

• Weather, once you give it a town. Set it in Look and settings, under Town for weather: type a town and pick it from the list (with no town yet, the weather corner's Add your town in Look and settings opens it there). Every screen in the workspace then uses the same town. Tap the weather for the week: today and the next six days, each with its high and low and its chance of rain. The degrees follow your browser's region.
• Prayer times, only if the household adds that widget and the signed-in account has Muslim features on. They are worked out on the screen from the same town, so they need no location prompt and keep working offline.
• Meals for today, with who is cooking.
• Chores: each person's next job, routines first when one is on (see routines), a line for a job whose person the wall cannot name, and one for anything up for grabs.
• The shopping list: how many items, the first few, and a note when someone is already at the store.
• Points, on today's page and each person's portrait.
• The calendar: the next events and the week, each dot in its person's color.

It never guesses your location from your network. If the forecast cannot be fetched, the weather corner is left empty rather than showing an error.

Photo frame#

A wall can show the family's own photos when nobody is using it. Open Family settings, find Wall display, turn on Show photos when the wall is quiet and press Add photos. On the phone or tablet wall, press Photo frame at the bottom of the screen.

• After two quiet minutes the wall fades into the photos, one every ten seconds, with the time in the corner.
• Every forty seconds it gives the day back for twenty, so the chores and dinner still get read from across the room.
• Any tap brings the wall straight back. The frame stays off while someone's panel is open and at night.

Only a grown-up adds or removes photos. Children see the album but cannot change it. The photos are seen only by people in the household, on the wall and in settings. They are never in a share link or a public page, and Margin Intelligence and connected assistants cannot open them. Photos count toward your plan's storage.

Tap a face#

Every face on the wall opens that person's own page: a line on today's page, a portrait on the household page. When a card has no room for everyone it ends with "and 2 more people". Tap that to see the people it left out, and tap one to open their page, the same as tapping a face that fits. On a short card, Everyone's next job keeps its rows for people (at least three) and moves Up for grabs into that list too. On a phone the page scrolls, so everyone shows.

The page is theirs and nobody else's. Their portrait and name are set large, with how many jobs are left today and a row of boxes: filled for done, dashed for waiting to be checked, empty for still to do. Their points sit in a jar card with a bar filling toward the reward they are closest to ("12 more for Pick Friday's movie").

Each job is a big card with its drawing, when it is due, the points it is worth and an I did it button. A ticked job stays on its card, dashed, with "Waiting for a grown-up to check" until someone approves it, then fades and says Checked with the points it earned. A shared job says "Your part is done" until everyone's part is in, and a job that needs no approval is checked straight away. Tomorrow's jobs are listed underneath. Along the bottom: Back to the wall, Only (their name) on the wall, and Done.

The same page is what a child sees on the web when they open their own chores.

• A child's page has bigger type and nothing else: no money, no list, no dinner.
• A grown-up's page adds the queue of chores waiting to be checked below their own.

A child's routines sit above their jobs. The one on now and the next one are drawn in full, a big button per step to tick. Every other routine that day is one line, with its time and how many steps are done, and a tap on the line opens it in full. A routine that is over or finished folds to its line. Nothing is hidden behind a "more". A step ticked here is saved as the child whose page it is.

Points and rewards stay off the page when the household has rewards switched off. Tonight's dinner and the shopping list have their own sheets on the wall.

Behind the PIN, every panel also shows that person's own numbers: points to spend, what they are owed, their allowance and the next reward. A Done in a panel counts as that person's tick, so a child's panel ticks only that child's chores, and a grown-up's panel can tick a child's part of a shared chore.

Names come from two places: the accounts in the workspace, and the nicknames, emoji and roles the family has set. The display uses both, so nobody drops off the wall for being known in only one. A household nickname wins over the name on the account.

A chore can belong to someone the screen cannot name, such as a member who has left or one whose details have not arrived yet. It still shows, under Someone, so work never disappears because a name is missing.

Show one person's day#

Inside a panel, Only Maya on the wall (with that person's name; the phone app's wall says Show only Maya on the wall) filters the wall to that person and closes the panel in one tap. While it is on, a line at the top says "Showing only Maya. Everyone"; tap it to go back. The choice is remembered on that device, so the screen in a child's room can stay on their name while the kitchen shows the whole house.

The PIN#

If a person has a PIN, a keypad stands in front of their panel. A child's PIN is set by a grown-up from the child's row in Family, People. A grown-up sets their own there, and an admin can clear a grown-up's forgotten PIN so they can choose a new one.

Nothing about the answer is kept. Close the panel and the next person starts at the keypad again, on this device and every other.

A pattern works in place of a PIN. Anyone who finds digits fiddly, a small child most of all, can draw a shape across a grid of nine dots instead: it joins 4 to 9 dots, and no dot twice. The person with a pattern sees the grid instead of the keypad, drags a finger (or the mouse) from dot to dot and lets go. It is checked on the server the same way and the same five wrong tries lock it. On a keyboard, press the dots in order and then Done.

Back to the wall#

Press Back to the wall at the top of the page, press Escape, or walk away. After 90 seconds with nobody touching the screen, the panel says "Back to the wall in 10s, tap to stay", counts down, and closes. Any touch starts the 90 seconds again.

Closing a panel forgets who was using it.

Tap anything#

Every part of a page opens. Tap it, or flick it upward, and it rises into a sheet with big buttons you can press standing up:

A mark on today's line opens its own event, and dinner on the line opens the meals. Every change and delete shows Undo for a few seconds. A repeating event asks which ones to change: This event (the default) or All events. "This and following" stays in the app's calendar, because it splits the series in two. Events from a subscribed calendar change at their source, and the sheet says so.

The first time you change something in a sheet, the wall asks Who's this? and shows the household's faces. Tap yours. If you have a wall PIN, the keypad comes up first. After that the sheet works as you until it closes, and your name sits at the top of it; tap it to hand the sheet to someone else.

Press Done or walk away to go back to the wall. After 90 quiet seconds a sheet counts down and closes itself, like a person's panel.

What the wall can change#

Anyone at the wall can mark a chore done, add to, change and check off the shopping list, plan and change meals, add, change and delete calendar events, tick and set reminders, keep a pinned checklist or note up to date, and ask for a reward. Each waits for Who's this? and is saved under the name that was chosen wherever the item records one, so the family feed says who did the work and the approval queue names the right person.

Giving and taking points is for grown-ups with their own wall PIN, the same bar as approving a chore. A child who taps in is told so, and a grown-up with no wall PIN is asked to set one in Family, People.

A grown-up's page also has the queue of chores waiting to be checked. Each approval is checked against that grown-up's own wall PIN and recorded under their name. Nobody approves their own chore at the wall. A grown-up with no wall PIN sees the queue but cannot approve from it.

Allowances work the same way. A child's balance stays hidden until a grown-up with their own wall PIN opens the Allowances sheet; then they can record the allowance as paid, cash handed over, or a correction with its reason, and change the amount. Each line is recorded under their name. Margin keeps the record and never moves money, and an Undo is a new correcting line rather than an edit, so the statement still shows what happened. An allowance that is a share of a pool changes with its pool, in Family, Allowances.

A habit's day belongs to its owner, so only they tick it. A focus session is started or stopped by the person at the screen, or stopped by a grown-up. The length you pick lives on that wall, which ends the session when time is up.

Two things stay read-only and say why: Who's home follows who has Margin open, and events from a subscribed calendar change at their source.

Everything else stays off the wall: notes nobody pinned there, the Vault, settings, and moving money into a savings goal. A child's page shows their points and gives them nothing to move.

Theme and text size#

The palette button in the bottom-right corner opens How the wall looks:

• Theme: any of the eight themes, each drawn as a small wall in its own face and colors, or Same as this device to follow the app's theme.
• Screen: Paper or Black. Black is for OLED screens: it puts every theme on true black, softens its colors, keeps the text off pure white, and moves the layout a few pixels more often, so a panel left on all day does not burn in.
• Text size: Close, Across the room or Far, for how far away people usually read it. Each choice shows its size.
• Turn pages by themselves: off, every minute or every five minutes. Off, the wall still goes back to its first page after two quiet minutes.

The choice belongs to that screen. The kitchen wall can be OLED black while your phone stays on Daybreak, and changing it never changes the theme on your account. From another device, change it under Settings > Wall screens > Look and settings.

Refresh#

Everything on the wall updates by itself the moment someone changes it on another device. If a screen ever looks behind, press the refresh button in the bottom-right corner, or pull down on the wall. Either one reconnects and asks for anything new; neither reloads the page.

The wall also reconnects quietly on its own, which brings back a connection that dropped overnight. Refresh by itself, under Updates in Look and settings, sets how often: every 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, or off. It starts at 15, belongs to this screen like the theme does, and waits while anything is open on the wall. Only when the screen has been disconnected for ten minutes does the foot of the wall say so, and when it last caught up.

When there is a new version of The Margin, the wall picks it up by itself once nobody has touched it for ten minutes: no tap, no mouse, no key and no remote press. It never does while a sheet, a chat, the editor or the companion's talk is open. The wall's last picture stays on the screen while it loads, so it never goes blank.

Using a remote or controller#

The wall works with whatever is in your hand.

Whatever has focus is marked with an ink bracket along its left side and foot, big enough to see from the sofa, and every other control draws a ring in your theme's accent, on every theme. Back with nothing open takes the wall to its first page. The controller is only listened to while one is connected.

Keys alone. Press Enter to step into a page and the arrows to move between its cards and the controls inside them. Tab goes through every control in order, and Shift+Tab goes back. Press ? for a sheet with every key on it. The same sheet lists everything the wall can do (edit it, its look, every page at once, refresh, wall mode, leave), so each one is a press away with a keyboard or a remote's OK.

The pointer. The wall hides the mouse pointer until a hand moves a mouse or an air mouse, and hides it again after three seconds of stillness. A screen with no mouse plugged in never shows one. While you are moving it, it stays.

A finger that lands on a block to scroll never opens it: a block opens on a real tap, decided when the finger lifts.

Living on a wall#

It keeps the screen awake while it is visible, so no timeout blanks it mid-week.

It rolls over at midnight by itself. A display left running for a month never needs reloading. When a new version of The Margin is out, the wall picks it up at a quiet moment: after five minutes with nobody touching it, or during the night, and never while a sheet, a panel or a half-typed word is on screen.

On a small computer#

A wall on a small board, like a Raspberry Pi running Chromium in kiosk mode, can feel slow. Light mode draws the same wall more cheaply: no blur or shadows, animations in a few steps instead of every frame, the companion walking in fewer frames, photos loaded at the size the screen needs, and the pages that are not on screen wait until you turn to them. Every widget, every page and everything you can press stay exactly as they are. The companion and its room stay sharp in light mode too: on any wall they are drawn from a picture at least as large as they appear on the screen.

It turns on by itself on a device with 2 GB of memory or less, such as a Raspberry Pi. To choose for yourself, open Theme and text size and set Light mode for a slow screen to Automatic, On or Off. Like the rest of the look, it belongs to that one screen. The phone app's wall has the same switch, under Theme and text size, and turns it on by itself on a tablet or TV with 2 GB of memory or less.

At night#

Each screen has its own night, set in How the wall looks, under At night, with the hours it starts and ends (10 PM to 6 AM to begin with):

• Screen off: the wall lets the screen sleep, so the device's own screen timeout turns it off. In Fully Kiosk Browser the wall turns the screen off itself. This choice only appears on a device that can do it.
• Black, with a small clock: the page goes black with a small, dim clock. On an OLED panel that is as good as off. The companion naps in the bottom-right corner, well clear of the clock, the prayer line and the mark, and both drift slowly so nothing burns in.
• Off: the wall stays as it is all night.

A touch wakes it for two minutes, and in the morning it comes back by itself. Night only happens on a real wall: a screen tablet-sized or larger, or the display installed to a home screen or in wall mode. Opened on a phone you are holding, the page stays as it is.

Leave the display#

On a phone you are holding, the cross at the top right goes straight back to Family. On a wall there is one control at the bottom, Leave the display, and you have to hold it for a second and a half while a ring fills. A tap only says "Hold to leave", which is what a toddler walking past gets.

After the hold it still asks, because behind it is the full app for whoever the device is signed in as. Confirming also leaves wall mode. With a keyboard, hold Enter on it, or press ? and choose Leave the wall, which asks the same question.

Good to know#

• Work done on the wall is saved under the name that was tapped. What the screen can write at all depends on the account it is signed in to.
• Asking for a reward sends it to the grown-ups, who say yes or no.
• Rewards and the shopping list start in the app. Until the household has some, the wall says so in one line.
• A grown-up approves from their own name and needs their own wall PIN for it, set in Family, People.
• The weather town you pick is saved for the whole workspace (on a family wall, the household), so every screen shows the same place.
• Leave the time empty when adding an event and it is all day.

With no connection#

The panels read the local database, so a display that has been running keeps showing meals, chores, shopping and points with no connection. Checking off a chore, the shopping list, planning a meal and adding an event work offline too, and sync when signal returns. Weather keeps its last reading. Approvals wait for the internet to check the PIN.

Availability#

The wall display is on every plan. Free has one screen showing one page of a ready-made room; Pro adds the editor and a second screen; Family keeps the household's wall with up to 5 screens; Team has a screen for each seat. The weather and the wall's town work on every plan. See Which wall you get and Plans and limits.

The household's wall is part of the family suite, so a family workspace's wall needs the Family plan.