the whole sky, written down.

how to read this

Zenith names things the way it draws them. A folder is a star that opens another ring. Going back is retracing your own line. The vocabulary is consistent, so once you have the words, the app explains itself.

Conventions in this manual

The glyphs, and what each one is

Zenith writes in symbols rather than words wherever a symbol will do. These are the ones you will meet on screen.

• ✦the starZenith's signature. Marks the app, confirms a choice, and sits at a ring's heart.
• ✛addTop dock button. Puts a new star on the ring.
• ◈iconSecond dock button. Changes the picture on the touched star.
• ✎editThird dock button. Opens the star editor for the touched star.
• −removeBottom dock button. Takes the touched star off the ring.
• ⚙︎settings cornerLower-left. Tap it, or hold that corner, to open settings.
• ‹backLatched-mode button, lower right. Folds one ring shut.
• ◉activateLatched-mode button, lower right. Opens the selected star.
• ◎re-placeMove an existing star to a new angle and orbit.
• ☄cometA notification drifting across the sky, waiting to be caught.
• ⤢resizeOn a floating widget's title bar — cycles three sizes.
• ⋮moreRow menu, used in the talisman list.
• ›deeperA row that opens something: a settings page, or a folder in list mode.
• ⟂overriddenThis control is being forced by an accessibility setting elsewhere.

The mental model in four sentences

1. The sky is empty on purpose. Nothing is drawn until you touch it, so there is no grid to arrange and no drawer to scroll.
2. Where you start the hold matters. The screen can be split into up to 9 regions, and each region keeps its own constellation.
3. Only the top ring exists. When you descend into a folder, the ring you came from vanishes, leaving one chevron marker at the exact point your line came from — trace back into it to fold the ring shut.
4. Releasing is committing. Lift on a star to open it, lift on empty sky to dissolve everything and change nothing.

install & first run

Zenith works the moment it is installed, but it is meant to be your home app. Setting it as the default launcher is what makes the home button return you to the sky — and it is what unlocks app shortcuts and Direct.

Installing

1. Install the app Zenith Launcher requires Android 8.0 or newer. It runs on phones and tablets; portrait is the designed orientation.
2. Open it once The first launch shows a five-step welcome. Every step can be skipped and repeated later.
3. Make it home Either accept step 2 of the welcome, or go to settings › system › set zenith as default launcher →. On Android 10+ this opens the system's "default home app" chooser.

The welcome walkthrough, step by step

Each card has one primary button and usually a skip. Granted permissions are detected live — if you enable something in system settings and come back, the card updates itself and shows enabled ✦.

What "starter ring" actually places

It fills region 1 with up to seven everyday apps at the compass points, plus a media folder at 6 o'clock. Only apps you actually have installed are placed; anything missing simply leaves that point empty.

First-time hints

The first time you use a feature, a single card explains it and disappears for good once tapped. There are eight, and they fire on the event, not on a timer.

Turn them off entirely with settings › system › guidance › first-time hints.

If the sky is empty

Before anything is placed, Zenith writes two lines near the bottom of the screen: "press and hold — a ring of stars will bloom / slide to ✛ to place your first app" and "hold the lower-left corner for settings". They vanish the moment the sky has any content.

the core gesture

One finger, one continuous motion: hold · bloom · slide · lift. Everything the launcher does is a variation on it, and no part of it requires precision — the ring blooms exactly where your finger already is.

The whole gesture

1. Press and hold on empty sky A faint spark grows under your fingertip. After the hold delay (220 ms by default) the spark blooms into a ring of stars centred on your finger.
2. Slide outward onto a star The star under your finger brightens, swells slightly, and its name appears above it. A small haptic tick marks each new star you cross.
3. Lift to open it The star goes supernova — a shockwave ring and sparks — and the app opens.
4. Or lift on empty sky Everything dissolves. Nothing was changed, nothing was launched.

Descending into a folder

A folder star wears a tiny orbit of its own — a centre point with three moons circling it. Sliding across a folder does nothing; you must rest on it.

1. Rest on the folder star Hold still on it for the bloom delay (330 ms by default). This dwell exists so you can circle a ring freely without opening every folder you pass.
2. Its ring blooms around it The ring you came from vanishes. The folder star stays at the new ring's heart, so you can still see what you opened.
3. Keep going as deep as you like Rings nest without limit.
4. To go back, retrace your line A chevron marker sits at the previous ring's centre — the exact point your finger came from. Slide back into it and this ring folds shut.

Every timing, with its range

What the launcher is doing at each moment

Useful when explaining why something did or did not happen. Zenith is always in exactly one of these states.

What each release does

List mode — the same gesture, in words

The big switch at the top of settings turns every ring into a cascading text panel. The tree, the dock, the corners and the timings are identical; only the drawing changes.

the sky's furniture

A handful of fixed things live on the screen around the constellation. Knowing where each sits — and that every one of them can be turned off — is most of what "finding your way around Zenith" means.

Everything that can appear, and where

Exact dock geometry

All four dock buttons sit on the same vertical line, 60 dp from the left edge, measured up from the bottom of the screen. They never move, so the path to them becomes muscle memory.

Corner and edge hit zones

rings, stars & orbits

A ring is a folder's contents drawn as a circle. Every star on it has an angle (where around the circle) and an orbit (how far out). Those two numbers are the whole layout system.

The four kinds of star

Two special behaviours any star can wear

• Hybrid parent — an app, shortcut or widget star that also has children. It wears a faint extra band. Dwell on it to bloom its ring; release on it to launch it. Both, from the same star.
• Ritual — a folder flagged in the ✎ editor. It wears a double band, and releasing on it activates everything inside, in order, 0.65 s apart. A morning routine as one release.

Angle — where around the ring

Angles are shown the way you would describe them out loud: 0° is straight up, and they increase clockwise. 90° is the right, 180° the bottom, 270° the left. This is the convention used in the placement screen and read aloud by TalkBack.

Orbit — how far out

Orbit is a multiplier on the base ring radius, not a fixed level. Drag a star nearer or further and it lands on quarter steps; if a sibling already sits at a nearby distance, it magnetises onto that sibling's orbit so rings never end up with two circles a hair apart.

Navigating a deep constellation

What changes how a star looks

the in-gesture dock

Four buttons up the left edge, visible only while you hold. They are how the sky is built without ever leaving the gesture — no long-press menus, no edit mode to enter and exit.

The four buttons

✛ is always there while a ring is open. ◈ ✎ − only appear once you have touched a star, because until then they have nothing to act on.

Live placement — the ✛ flow in detail

This is the part worth learning properly. Sliding onto ✛ without lifting does not open a menu — it hands your thumb the new star.

1. Slide onto ✛, keep holding The ring's stars fade out and guide circles appear: faint quarter-step rings, brighter rings where siblings already sit, brightest on the orbit you are on.
2. Move your thumb A ghost star with a crosshair follows you around the ring, snapping to quarter steps and magnetising onto sibling orbits. A live readout above it reads 135° · 1.25× — release to choose.
3. Release where you want it The spot is locked in. Only now does the add sheet open.
4. Pick what goes there Choose an app, folder, widget, shortcut or Direct item; it lands exactly on the spot you marked, with no second placement step.

Which ring does ✛ add to?

Deliberately, the target is the star under your finger at the moment you reach ✛, if there is one — that is how you add inside a star and make a hybrid parent. Otherwise it is the open ring. To be sure you are adding to the ring, route your finger around any star that lies between you and the dock.

adding things

The add sheet has six tabs. The first five put something new on the ring; the sixth edits what is already there.

The six tabs

Direct — the inbox for things other apps send you

When you use "add to home screen" in any app — a Chrome bookmark, a file, a note, a playlist, a contact — Android hands it to whichever app is your home screen. Zenith accepts it silently, shows a small toast (✦ name → direct), and files it. Nothing appears on your sky until you place it. Interrupting you mid-task with a placement screen would be the wrong moment to ask.

• The list is newest-first and keeps everything pinned since install.
• Label and icon are captured at the moment it arrives, so an entry never goes blank later.
• A row shows used by 2 stars if you have already placed it more than once.
• forget drops it from this list only. Stars already using it keep working, because the shortcut stays pinned underneath.
• Requires Zenith to be your default launcher — Android only sends pins to the active home app.

The Edit tab

The placement screen

When a spot was not already chosen with live placement, Zenith shows a full-screen placement step. The circle drawn here is the real orbit at true scale, so what you set is exactly what gets rendered.

• Drag anywhere — the star follows your finger around the circle. Distance from the centre changes the orbit; angle around it changes the angle.
• Existing stars are shown faintly, with their names, so you can see the gap you are filling.
• The readout at the bottom gives the angle in degrees (0° up, clockwise) and the orbit as a multiplier and in dp.
• place ✦ commits. cancel abandons — and if a widget was being bound, its binding is released too, so nothing is left dangling.

Widgets, in full

1. ✛ › Widgets › pick a provider Android may ask permission to bind the widget the first time.
2. Configure it If the widget has its own setup screen, it opens now.
3. Place it Either it lands on the spot you already marked, or the placement screen opens.
4. Open it Release on its star and it appears as a floating window.

the star editor ✎

Everything about one star, in one panel. Reach it by touching the star during a hold and then sliding onto ✎.

icons ◈

Three layers decide what picture a star wears. Each one overrides the one below it.

The ◈ picker

Setting one pack for everything

settings › background & light › icon set lists system icons, then any official Zenith packs, then every other installed pack. Applying a pack is free — Zenith sells icon packs, so it would be strange to charge you for using one. Per-star ◈ choices still override the pack.

Zenith detects packs that publish the standard hooks used by Nova, ADW and Lawnchair, plus its own. A pack with no entry for a given app falls back to that app's real icon rather than a blank.

deep sky & the star index

Two ways to reach an app that is not on any ring. Deep Sky is a searchable list; the Star Index is the same set of apps arranged as a semicircle you can slide through without lifting.

Deep Sky — every app, searchable

How to open it: hold the lower-right corner (the default), flick up, or assign it anywhere in settings › gestures.

• The list appears first and is scrollable immediately; the search box sits at the bottom, so you can browse without the keyboard ever appearing. Tap the box only when you want to type.
• Tap an app to launch it.
• Work-profile apps are listed and marked · work.
• A ✦ zenith settings entry is always at the top of the list. It is deliberate: no matter how you reassign the corners, there is always one guaranteed way back into settings.

Long-press an app in Deep Sky

The Star Index — all apps, without lifting

The index blooms as a semicircle anchored to the right edge of the screen, at the height where your gesture started. It is built for one continuous motion: slide to a letter group, slide outward to an app, lift.

Four ways to open it

Using it

1. Letter groups bloom on the inner arc Between 3 and 8 groups, sized so each holds roughly 15 apps, with boundaries snapped to letter changes — so you get A–C, D–G, and so on, never a letter split across two groups.
2. Slide onto a group Its apps bloom in outer arcs — up to 9 in the first arc, 12 in the second, the rest in a third.
3. Slide onto an app It swells and its name appears to its left.
4. Lift to launch Or release on a group to leave the index open and drive it by tapping instead.

What a "quick circle" is

So it is never triggered by accident, the stroke has to actually be a circle: drawn fast (before the ring blooms), at least ~140 dp of travel, closing back near where it started, turning roughly a full revolution, and at least 50 dp across in both directions. Any size, anywhere on screen, either direction.

gestures & actions

Thirteen positions on the screen can each be bound to a built-in action — or to any app or shortcut on the phone. This is where Zenith stops being a launcher and starts being a control surface.

The thirteen positions

The action roster

Every position offers the same list. Tap a chip to assign it.

Binding an app to a position

Tap the app or shortcut chip and a picker opens. Choose an app, or drill into an app to pick one of its shortcuts. The chip then wears what it opens — ✦ Spotify — so the row reads as what it does. Tapping the chip again always reopens the picker; that is the only way to change what is bound.

Zenith actions — the assistive service

Lock, shade, recents, quick tiles, screenshot, power, back and home are system-level actions that no ordinary app can perform. Zenith offers them through a minimal accessibility service called Zenith actions.

• It is configured to read nothing from your screen. It only performs the actions you assign.
• It is entirely optional — every other part of the launcher works without it.
• Turn it on at settings › system › enable zenith actions →, which deep-links to Zenith's own accessibility toggle.
• If you trigger one of these actions without the service, Zenith shows a short message and opens accessibility settings for you.

talismans

A talisman is a shape you draw. Draw it fast on the sky and it casts — opening an app, running an action, or blooming a ring. It is swipe-to-type for launching.

Inscribing one

1. Open settings › talismans Then ✎ inscribe new talisman. (Or, from Deep Sky, long-press an app › inscribe talisman for this — the target is then pre-chosen.)
2. Draw your shape One continuous stroke, anywhere on the black sheet. It must be at least a few points long to register.
3. Draw it again The first attempt shows faintly behind you as a guide. Two samples let Zenith learn your hand rather than one perfect stroke.
4. Name it and bind it Three tabs: apps (searchable), actions (the action roster), rings (any folder in your sky, listed by its full path).
5. Done It appears in the talisman list immediately, ready to cast.

If your new shape draws too much like an existing one, a warning appears while you are still binding: "⚠ draws like 'X' — priority order will decide which casts". You can redraw, or accept it and settle the conflict with order.

Casting one

Draw the shape fast on empty sky — before the hold delay elapses and a ring blooms. Speed is the whole trigger: a slow press becomes a ring, a fast stroke becomes a glyph. While you are drawing fast, the comet trail switches to the talisman ink colour, so you can see which mode you are in.

• The stroke must travel at least ~90 dp to be considered.
• It is matched against every inscribed talisman; a match must score above 0.80 similarity.
• List order is priority. When two talismans score within a whisker of each other, the one higher in the list wins. Only a clearly better score can take a cast from a higher-priority talisman.
• A successful cast flashes the glow colour outward from the centre of your stroke, leaves a ghost of the glyph, and rings a shockwave.
• Casting a talisman bound to a ring opens that ring in place, staying open without your finger — you then tap the stars to drive it. This is the one way to reach a ring that lives nowhere on your sky.

Managing them

Colours

settings › background & light › light colors holds two talisman colours: talisman ink (the stroke while you are drawing fast) and cast glow (the flash when a sigil lands).

comets

Notifications, but as weather. A new notification crosses your sky as a gold comet with its title trailing behind it. Catch it, or let it pass.

Turning them on

1. settings › system › comets · notifications The switch "notifications drift by as comets" is on by default.
2. Grant notification access Tap enable comet feed →, which deep-links to the toggle for Zenith comets. Until this is granted, the switch has nothing to show.
3. That is all The status line then reads "comet feed connected ✦".

Catching one

1. Hold on the comet's head Press and keep holding on the bright point, not the tail. A ring tightens around it to show it is armed.
2. Its flight freezes After the hold delay, the comet stops and a small menu appears beside it.
3. Slide to a row and lift open · dismiss · snooze 30 min.
4. Or lift off the menu The comet resumes its flight exactly where it paused. Nothing is dismissed.

How they behave

• Each comet flies for roughly 11–17 seconds, entering from either side, at its own height, size, slope and speed — no two look alike.
• They fade in as they enter and fade out as they leave.
• Ongoing notifications (music players, downloads) are ignored, as are Zenith's own.
• A notification with no title and no text produces no comet.
• Nothing is stored. The title is drawn on screen and forgotten; it is never written to disk and never transmitted.

the sky veil

A curtain drawn over the launcher when the screen sleeps. A drawn sigil lifts it. It is a privacy screen for your constellation — not device security.

Setting it up

1. settings › system › sky veil Turn on "veil when the screen sleeps".
2. Choose the key any talisman (the default) accepts any sigil you have inscribed; or pick one specific talisman as the only key.
3. Optionally seal it by hand Assign the seal the sky action to a corner, edge, flick or double-tap to draw the veil whenever you like.

Getting back in

A refused sigil always speaks, even with every label turned off: "the sky does not know that sign". A failed attempt is never indistinguishable from a dead screen.

The settings page states the unseal method in capitals before you ever need it, and if you have no talismans inscribed it says so plainly and offers to take you to the inscribe screen.

What the veil shows

By default: the clock, a one-line hint, and — with My Sky on — the real night sky behind it. Back cannot lift it.

regions

The screen can be divided into up to nine areas, and each remembers its own root ring. Where you start the hold decides which constellation appears — a work set on the left, a play set on the right, without switching anything.

How the grid is laid out

Regions are numbered left to right, then top to bottom, starting at 1.

The region editor

settings › regions & star index › ✦ edit region layout opens a full-screen editor.

• The slider at the bottom sets how many regions exist (1–9). Free is capped at 2; reaching past opens the Gold sheet.
• The dividers are draggable — grab a line anywhere along its length and move it. Lines run edge to edge, so regions can never gap or overlap. Each line stops 8% short of its neighbours.
• The big numbers show which region each cell is.
• done ✦ saves the count and the divider positions; cancel discards.

The other two region controls

skies

A sky is a complete, separate setup — its own constellations, its own regions, its own background and theme. Switching skies is one tap. gold beyond the first.

Managing skies

They live at the top of the settings main page, just under the mode switch.

What belongs to a sky, and what is shared

This table matters. Change something in the left column and only the current sky changes; change something in the right column and every sky changes.

settings — full reference

Every page, every control, in the order they appear on screen.

Getting in, and getting around

• Three ways in: tap the ⚙︎ in the lower-left corner · hold that corner · open Deep Sky and tap ✦ zenith settings.
• Back walks up one level: from a sub-page to the main list, and only from the main list does it leave settings.
• Every change applies immediately. There is no save button anywhere.
• · close · at the bottom of the main page dismisses the sheet, as does tapping the dimmed area above it.

The main page

The twelve pages

2 · system

5 · background & light

A live preview card sits at the top and re-renders with every change below it — background, a sample stroke at your chosen thickness and glow, a sample star, and the four dock colours.

The eight themes

My Sky gold

With this on, your background is the actual night sky above your location, right now — around 45 named bright stars plus a field of roughly 520 more, placed by local sidereal time and latitude, redrawn every minute so the sky slowly turns. Constellation lines are drawn as hairlines when both ends are above your horizon: Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, the Southern Cross and the Summer Triangle.

Without location permission it draws a plausible mid-northern sky; grant the weather permission for your true coordinates.

6 · rings & effects

9 · sky overlays

The overlay block sits above the ring canvas, so tapping the clock opens the clock rather than blooming a ring.

12 · about

The version number, the credits — developed by black syntax · published by friend castle — links to friendcastle.org and the studio's other apps, the Open-Meteo credit for weather and sky data, the contact address [email protected], and the privacy policy.

the sky's voice

Every sound Zenith makes is synthesised on the fly — there are no audio files in the app. A star's note comes from where it sits on its ring, so tracing the same path twice plays the same phrase, and a practiced route becomes a melody you know by ear before you know it by sight. gold

accessibility

Zenith is a gesture launcher, which makes reachability a real design problem rather than a checkbox. Every option here is optional, off by default, and never paywalled.

Motor & touch

Latched mode, in full

With latched buttons on, the sustained hold disappears from the launcher entirely:

1. Hold once to open a ring Then lift. The ring stays open.
2. Tap stars to select them Each tap arms that star.
3. Tap ◉ to open it Lower right. On a folder, ◉ descends into it instead.
4. Tap ‹ to go back Below ◉. It folds one ring shut, and closes the session at the root.

Vision

Motion, timing & haptics

TalkBack & screen readers

The launcher is drawn on a bare canvas, which a screen reader cannot see. So when — and only when — a touch-exploration reader such as TalkBack is running, Zenith lays an invisible, focusable list of the current region's stars over the sky. It has no visual footprint and receives touches only through the accessibility framework.

Each entry is announced as a direction to draw toward, which is how a blind user learns a constellation:

Angles use the spoken convention: 0° is straight up, increasing clockwise. Orbit distance is called out as near, outer or far when a star is off the default ring.

star chart & backups

A star chart is your whole sky in one JSON file — constellations, settings, talismans and your custom icons. It is written only when you ask for it, to a place you choose, and Zenith never uploads it anywhere.

Exporting

1. settings › star chart › export ✦
2. Choose where to save it Android's file picker opens, pre-named zenith-star-chart.json.
3. That's the whole backup Keep it, sync it, or send it to a friend — a star chart is shareable by design.

Importing

import… opens the file picker; choose a star chart and it is applied immediately, replacing your constellations and settings.

Hidden apps

Apps hidden from Deep Sky (long-press › hide from deep sky) are listed here, each with an unhide button. The section only appears when something is hidden.

Erase all rings

erase all rings… empties every region in the current sky. It is a two-tap confirmation — the button changes to tap again to erase all rings — and any widgets held by those stars are released. Settings, talismans and other skies are untouched.

privacy & permissions

No spyware. No accounts. No servers. Zenith has nowhere to send your data and never will — the apps you open, your notifications, your location. There is no "us" to send it to.

The one thing that ever leaves your phone

If you turn on weather or My Sky, your location — rounded to about the nearest kilometre — is sent to the public Open-Meteo weather service. No account, no identifier, nothing else. Leave weather off and Zenith never makes a network request at all.

What each permission does

Where your data lives

Constellations, settings, talismans and custom icons all sit in Zenith's private storage on your device. A star chart is written only when you export one. Uninstalling removes everything.

The full policy is at zenith.blacksyntax.com/privacy.

free & gold

The rule Zenith holds to: every feature is usable for free. Gold caps quantity and depth — it never walls a feature away. All accessibility, all backups, and comets are free forever.

Exactly where the free limits sit

troubleshooting

Sorted by what the person actually says, not by which subsystem is involved.

"Nothing happens when I hold the screen"

• You may be in a corner or an edge. The four corners (52 dp) and the edge bands (18 dp) run their assigned action instead of opening a ring. Start the hold nearer the middle.
• You may be moving. Movement before the hold lands turns the touch into a flick or a talisman attempt. Hold still.
• The hold delay may be long. Check settings › rings & effects › hold delay.
• That region may be the Star Index region. Check settings › regions & star index › open from a region.

"The ring opens but it's empty"

That region has no stars yet — it says "slide to ✛ to add" under the ring. Slide onto ✛, place the star, and pick what it opens. Remember each region keeps its own ring: a full region 1 does not fill region 2.

"Folders open when I don't want them to" / "won't open at all"

Folders open on a dwell, not a pass. Raise folder ring blooms after if they open while you are circling; lower it if resting feels slow. It lives in settings › accessibility › extended.

"I can't get back to the previous ring"

Trace your finger back into the small chevron at the previous ring's centre — the exact point your line came from. If you have overshot, slide to empty sky, lift (nothing happens), and start again.

"I turned off the gear and now I can't find settings"

Three ways back, in order of reliability:

1. Hold the lower-left corner — the default settings anchor.
2. Open Deep Sky (hold the lower-right corner, or flick up) and tap ✦ zenith settings, which is always the first row.
3. Open Zenith from your app drawer if another launcher is still installed.

"App shortcuts don't work"

Android only gives shortcuts to the active home app. Set Zenith as your default launcher in settings › system, then return to the Shortcuts tab. The same applies to Direct.

"Lock / shade / recents / screenshot do nothing"

Those need the Zenith actions accessibility service. settings › system › enable zenith actions →. Lock and screenshot additionally need Android 9 or newer.

"No comets appear"

• Grant notification access — settings › system › enable comet feed →. The status line must read comet feed connected ✦.
• Only new notifications become comets. Existing ones do not.
• Ongoing notifications (music, downloads) are skipped by design, and so are Zenith's own.
• You have to be looking at the sky — comets live on the home screen, not over other apps.

"My talisman won't cast"

• Draw faster. Speed is the trigger. If a ring blooms, you were too slow.
• Draw bigger. Very short strokes are ignored.
• Check the master switch — settings › talismans › talismans active.
• Check for a lookalike. If two glyphs are similar, the one higher in the list wins; use ⋮ move up, or re-inscribe one as a clearly different shape.
• Watch the ink colour. The trail turns talisman-ink while you are drawing fast enough to cast.

"I'm locked behind the veil"

Press one finger anywhere and hold perfectly still for four seconds. A ring fills around your finger, and the veil lifts the instant it completes. This always works, with or without any talisman inscribed.

"A star is off the edge of the screen"

It was placed at an orbit or angle that falls outside the screen from where you start that hold. Open the ring, touch the star if you can reach it and use ✎ › ◎ re-place — or find it in ✛ › Edit, which lists every star on the ring regardless of where it sits, and use ◎ there.

"An icon didn't change"

Higher layers win. A star with its own ◈ icon ignores the app-level icon, which in turn ignores the pack. Clear the star's icon with reset icon to let the layer below show through.

"The widget says 'widget unavailable'"

Its binding is gone — usually after restoring a backup on a different device, or after the widget's app was reinstalled. Remove the star and add the widget again from ✛ › Widgets.

"Weather shows · · ·"

It has no reading yet. Check that location permission was granted, that the device has a recent location fix, and that you have a connection. Tap the weather line to force a refresh.

"Left/right flicks never fire"

Android's back gesture owns the screen edges and Zenith never fights the system. Use a corner, an up/down flick, or the drawn circle instead.

instructing a user

This chapter is written for whoever is doing the explaining — a support reply, a friend on the phone, or an assistant answering a question. Each entry is the question as people actually ask it, followed by wording that can be read out verbatim.

Five rules for explaining Zenith

1. Always say where the finger starts. "Press and hold in the middle of the screen" is a complete instruction; "open the menu" is not.
2. Always say whether to lift. Most Zenith mistakes are lifting too early. Say "keep holding" out loud at every step that needs it.
3. Use the app's own words. hold · slide · lift · rest · trace · draw · cast · inscribe. They match what is written on screen and in the hints.
4. Give the escape first. Tell people that lifting on empty sky cancels everything before you ask them to try anything.
5. Name the corner, not the icon. "The lower-left corner" survives every theme and settings change; "the little grey gear" does not.

Answers, ready to read out

Decision tree — "it isn't working"

glossary

Zenith's vocabulary, defined once.

quick reference

One card. If you print anything, print this.

Gestures

Defaults worth knowing

Where to find things