# The wall display

> Turn a spare tablet or screen into a shared display on any plan, for a household, a desk or an office: a grid of pages you swipe up, down and sideways, built from widgets for every part of Margin, arranged and saved as templates, web pages like Home Assistant pinned beside them, a remote or controller if you like, and a look of its own on every screen.

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](#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 `G W` 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.

| Workspace          | The wall                                                                             | It starts on                            |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------- |
| A family workspace | The household's wall: chores, points, meals, everyone's pages and every widget       | Everyone today, with every room offered |
| Your own workspace | A desk wall for one person: focus, habits, boards, deadlines and the month's money   | Desk: my day, with the eight Pro rooms  |
| A team workspace   | An office wall: who's in, workload, deadlines, the team calendar and recent activity | Team office, with the eight team rooms  |

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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/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.

| Plan   | Screens         | Pages on a screen | Arranging it                                                                       |
| ------ | --------------- | ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Free   | 1               | 1                 | Pick one of the ready-made rooms; the wall shows its first page                    |
| Pro    | 2               | no limit          | The full editor: move and resize widgets, add pages, web pages and saved templates |
| Family | 5               | no limit          | The full editor, as it always was                                                  |
| Team   | 1 for each seat | no limit          | The full editor                                                                    |

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.

> **On the phone:** In the phone and tablet app, open **Wall** in the menu (in a family workspace,
> also **Family**, then **Wall display**). It keeps
> the screen on for as long as it is open. Prop the tablet on a stand and turn on
> Guided Access (iPadOS) or screen pinning (Android) so the wall stays put. To
> leave, press and hold **Hold to leave the wall** at the
> bottom. On an Android tablet or TV the wall is a full kiosk, and leaving asks
> first: see [The app on an Android tablet or TV](#the-app-on-an-android-tablet-or-tv).
>
> The app's wall is the same grid of pages. Pick a category and a page from the
> chips at the top; a tablet draws each page as the table it is arranged on, and
> a phone stacks the widgets and scrolls. It draws the clock, the weather, this
> week, the next two weeks, today's meals, the list, everyone's chores, points,
> the House Cup, the reward shelf, a checklist and a web page. On a desk or an
> office wall it also draws focus today, habit streaks, boards, the month's
> money, the journal prompt, the Mind's thread, workload, a sprint, the team
> calendar, daily update, who's in, pacts, deadlines and team activity, read from the
> same records as the browser's. A widget the app cannot draw yet is left out of
> that screen's pages, never shown as a hole. The
> screen keeps its own arrangement and look, on the device and in Margin, so a
> connected assistant can arrange it too and no other screen is touched.
>
> A grown-up taps **Edit wall**, or presses and holds the page
> for half a second, to arrange it. Press and hold a widget, then drag it: the
> others slide aside as it goes. A full page makes room the way a phone's home
> screen does, and every ready-made page keeps a little free room, so a widget
> you move in usually just fits. The widget lands where you let go, what it covers moves to a free
> spot, and whatever no longer fits moves to the next page, or to a new page
> right after this one when the next is full too. Carried onto a full page, a
> widget moves off as little as it can: one widget if one is enough, the
> smallest first. The note names each widget that moved and the page it went
> to, and **Show** takes you there. A widget keeps its own size on the TV and
> on the phone wherever it goes. Extra pages are named after the first, as
> "My day (2)" and "My day (3)". A move is only refused when the category
> already has 12 pages, and the wall says so. Tap a widget to pick it: a corner handle
> resizes it cell by cell and says the size as you pull, and its size chips pick
> S, M, L or Full. Full gives it the whole page and moves the rest on. Each
> widget also has controls to move it earlier or later, set it up and remove
> it. **Undo** takes back the last change, page changes included, and goes
> back to the page it was on; Done clears it. **Add a widget** has a search,
> the categories as chips, and S, M or L on each one before you add it. If it
> lands on another page, the note says which and **Show** takes you there.
> **This page** (rename, move left or right, add a page, add a category,
> delete) and **Templates** are in the bar below. On a tablet, **Pages**,
> **Templates** and **Cancel** sit under **More** so **Done** always fits. Deleting a page asks first:
> **Delete page** moves its widgets to the page before it, **Delete page and
> widgets** takes them too, and **Undo** stays up for 8 seconds. Templates are the household's own, shared with every
> screen: save this wall, use one on this screen, star, rename, duplicate,
> update from this screen or delete. The built-ins are there too, and the sheet
> says how many of a template's widgets the app left out.
>
> Tap a name to see that person's page. When the household has more people than
> fit on the row, **and N more people** opens the rest, and choosing one opens
> their page. Tap an event to change or delete it; the toast has **Undo**, which
> puts the whole repeating event back as it was. Hold a line (a meal, a list
> item, a job, an event, a reward) to pick its drawing. **Theme and text
> size** holds this wall's **Units** (Automatic, Metric or US), text
> size, turning pages by itself and what happens at night; a tablet or TV on the
> wall goes dark at night, a phone in a hand never does. The names, PINs, panels and
> approvals work the same way as in the browser, offline approvals included: the
> app takes the PIN, holds the approval and checks it once the signal is back.
> The wall is the one screen in the app that turns with the device, so a tablet
> on its side shows it sideways; leave it and the app is upright again. The
> theme picker, the refresh button and the widgets not listed here are in the
> browser's wall today.

## 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:

| Key                  | What it does                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| -------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Arrows               | Move to the next control. The one you are on has a ring around it. At the edge of the page, where there is nothing further that way, they turn the page: left and right to the next category, up and down to the next page in it. |
| OK                   | Presses what the ring is on.                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Hold OK              | Presses and holds it, the same as a long press on a touch screen.                                                                                                                                                                 |
| Fast-forward, rewind | Next and previous category.                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| Play/pause           | Next page in the category.                                                                                                                                                                                                        |
| Stop                 | Back to the first page.                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
| Menu or Info         | Opens **Theme and text size**.                                                                                                                                                                                                    |
| Back                 | Closes what is open. Off the first page, goes back to the first page. On the first page, asks to leave the 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](#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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/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:

```yaml
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](https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/authentication/providers/#trusted-networks)
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](#ask-a-grown-ups-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](#change-a-screens-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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/wall-widgets#prayer-times): 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](#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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/themes-and-appearance#on-the-family-wall).

### 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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/wall-widgets#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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/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](https://themarginapp.com/docs/family#morning-and-bedtime-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.

> **Note: What it never shows** Anything in the Vault or behind a PIN lock, a note nobody chose for the wall,
> and money amounts until a grown-up enters their wall PIN. A wall display is a public
> screen in a private house, and the list of what it can draw is kept short on
> purpose.

## 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.

**How the PIN works**

- **4 to 6** digits, checked on the server against a stored hash

- **5** wrong tries in a minute locks that name
- **5** minutes before that name can try again

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**.

> **Known limit: PINs need the internet** Checking a PIN is a call to the server. A display with no connection opens
> panels without asking. Chores, the shopping list, meals and the calendar work
> as usual; asking for a reward needs the connection back. An approval
> asks for the grown-up's PIN and then waits for the internet to check it;
> nothing is approved until the server says yes. A wrong PIN drops the approval
> and the screen says so. The PIN is held in memory only, never saved on the
> device, so reloading the page or closing the app forgets approvals still
> waiting; press Approve again.

## 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:

| Part                          | What you can do in it                                                                                                            |
| ----------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Chores                        | See everyone's jobs and mark any of them done                                                                                    |
| Shopping list                 | Add things, check them off, put them back, switch lists, change a name or how many, remove                                       |
| Today's table                 | See the week's plan, plan a meal for any day, rename a meal, pick the cook, take one off                                         |
| Coming up, the day, this week | See the next two weeks, add an event, and tap one to change its title, day, time and people, or delete it                        |
| Reminders                     | Tick today's reminders off, add one with a time, change one, clear one                                                           |
| A checklist                   | Tick, add, rename and delete items. A checklist card with nothing to show offers a new one                                       |
| A household note              | Change what the note says, right there                                                                                           |
| Points                        | See the standings and the rewards shelf, ask for a reward, and give or take points                                               |
| Habits                        | Tick today's habit as its owner; a grown-up renames one, changes how often, or adds one                                          |
| Focus                         | Start focusing for 15, 25, 45 or 60 minutes as yourself, and stop a session                                                      |
| Allowances                    | A grown-up with a wall PIN sees each child's balance, records a payout, cash handed over or a correction, and changes the amount |
| House Cup                     | See the season's standings, and give or take points to a person or a whole house                                                 |
| A board                       | Tick a card done, move it to another column, add a card                                                                          |

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.

> **Side note:** A test reads the source of every kiosk file. Wall files fail it if they import
> anything that writes, and panel files fail if a write forgets whose it is.

## 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.

| You have                 | To move             | To open         | To go back           | To turn the page                                                                   |
| ------------------------ | ------------------- | --------------- | -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| A finger                 |                     | Tap             | Done, or tap outside | Swipe sideways or up and down                                                      |
| Mouse and keyboard       | Arrow keys          | Enter, or click | Escape               | Arrows at the page's edge, Page Up and Page Down, 1 to 9, G for every page         |
| A TV remote or air mouse | The arrows (D-pad)  | OK              | Back                 | Left or right at the page's edge, or the skip buttons                              |
| A game controller        | D-pad or left stick | A (Cross)       | B (Circle)           | Bumpers for categories, triggers or the right stick for pages, View for every page |

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.

**What it does to last**

- **4** minutes between tiny layout shifts that stop a static clock burning into a
  cheap panel (90 seconds in OLED black)
- **2** minutes awake after someone touches it at night

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.

> **Careful: Load it once first** A tablet that has never opened the display and then loses signal shows the
> clock and "Catching up with the family", because it has nothing saved to
> draw. The way out is on that screen too, so it is never a dead end.

## 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](#which-wall-you-get) and
[Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits).

The household's wall is part of the family suite, so a family workspace's wall
needs the [Family plan](https://themarginapp.com/pricing).

> **Note: If the Family plan ends** The rest of the family pages stay readable after a Family plan ends. The
> household's wall does not: it shows the plan notice instead. It is a screen made of
> buttons for whoever walks past, and one that silently refuses every tap would
> be worse than a clear sentence.

**Where to next**

- [Family workspaces](https://themarginapp.com/docs/family): roles, chores and approvals behind the panels
- [The shopping list](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-shopping-list): the list the wall checks off
- [Working offline](https://themarginapp.com/docs/working-offline): what keeps running with no signal


---

Section: Together. Checked against the running product on October 26, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-wall-display. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt