platform-registers

A modal list of choices that slides up from the bottom of a phone screen in response to something you just did, with cancel at the end.

A short menu of app actions hung off the app icon itself, opened by a long press or a secondary click before the app is even running.

A bar of three to five top level destinations pinned to the bottom edge of a phone screen, with the current destination always marked.

A slot on a watch face filled with one live figure from an app, sized to be read in the second a wrist is raised.

A persistent strip of application icons anchored to a screen edge, holding launchers, running apps and pinned items in one row.

A round, raised button that hovers above the content in a fixed corner, carrying the one action the screen is most for.

A persistent, updating view of something in progress, shown in system places like a lock screen so a reader can follow it without opening the app.

A permanent horizontal row of menu titles (File, Edit, View) whose menus open on click and then follow the pointer along the row.

A small application controlled item living in the system menu bar or tray, usually an icon that opens a compact panel of status and controls.

A panel collecting notifications that were missed or kept, usually opened from a bell with an unread count.

A small panel of controls that floats just outside a window edge in visionOS, staying with the window without covering its contents.

A system delivered message shown outside the app, on a lock screen or in a notification list, that has to earn the interruption it costs.

A square matrix barcode rendered in the interface to hand a link or credential to a phone camera.

A one tap button or toggle an app contributes to the system control surface, so one feature can be reached without opening the app.

A tall tabbed toolbar that replaces menus, grouping commands into labelled sections with the important ones drawn larger.

The system panel of destinations and actions for sending the current item elsewhere, populated by whatever apps are installed.

The strip along the top of a window carrying its title and window controls, and the region you drag to move the window.

The on screen keyboard a device raises for a field, whose key set the field itself chooses by declaring what kind of value it wants.

A spinning drum of values that snaps to the item under a fixed selection line, the iOS way of choosing from a short list.

A small, glanceable view of an app placed on a system surface such as a home screen or desktop, sized in fixed slots rather than freely.

The cluster of close, minimise and zoom controls in a window's title bar, three coloured dots on macOS and three glyphs on Windows.

A virtual unit of length that stays the same physical size across screen densities, so one number can describe a layout on every device.

The physical fold state of a foldable device, such as flat, book or tabletop, which a layout can respond to alongside plain size.

The camera housing that intrudes into the screen rectangle, which a layout has to route content around rather than under.

Drawing an app behind the system bars so content reaches the physical screen edges, with insets applied only to what must stay tappable.

The thin bar at the bottom of a gesture driven phone screen, reserved space that app content must not sit beneath.

Designing and writing the narrow layout first and adding rules as space is gained, so the small screen is the default rather than the fallback.

A windowing mode where two or more apps share one screen, side by side, stacked, or as freeform windows, so every app must survive being any size.

The inset a television layout keeps clear of the screen edge, about five percent, because sets crop the outer frame and anything near it disappears.

How many physical pixels a display packs into an inch, and the reason a CSS pixel is a unit of measure rather than a dot on the screen.

The part of the screen guaranteed clear of notches, system bars and rounded corners, where interactive content can safely sit.

How an app arranges itself when one window is stretched across two displays, either keeping content clear of the seam or splitting the layout exactly at it.

The arc of a phone screen a thumb reaches comfortably in a one handed grip, with harder to reach bands above and across from it.

The band across the top of a television home screen that the focused app fills with its own content, so an app advertises itself before anyone opens it.

A named bucket for how much width an app window has, such as compact, medium and expanded, used in place of raw device categories.

The register for screens read from a couch: focus-driven navigation with a remote, oversized type and cards, horizontal rails, and safe margins for TV overscan.

An in-product request to rate or review, usually timed to a moment of success and often filtered so only positive responses reach the public store.

A strip pinned to the top of a mobile web page urging the reader to open or install the native app instead, with an install or open action.

A paper-like style built for or borrowed from electronic ink: near-white ground, pure black text, hairline rules, no shadows or gradients, and paged navigation.

Apple's 2025 material where controls float as a translucent layer that refracts what is behind them and reshapes fluidly as content moves underneath.

Fluent's opaque app background material, subtly tinted with the user's desktop wallpaper colour and going neutral when the window loses focus.

Interface designed to sit in three dimensional space, where panels are made of a system glass material and hierarchy is carried by depth rather than by colour.

A swipe that begins off the screen edge and travels inward, reserved by the system for navigation such as going back or revealing a drawer.

A brief physical vibration or tap produced by the device to confirm an interaction, mark a boundary, or signal success and failure.

Spatial input where the eyes choose the target and a finger pinch commits the action, so selection and activation come from different body parts.

Physically shaking a device to trigger undo or redo, an accelerometer gesture Apple defines system wide for reversing a recent edit.

An editing state announced by making every rearrangeable item wobble in place, so the whole screen says it can be reordered.

A back gesture that reveals the destination underneath while the finger is still down, so the swipe can be finished or abandoned once the reader has seen where it goes.

A navigation transition where the new view slides in and pushes the old one off, and reversing it pops back, encoding depth in a stack.

A platform feature that scales interface text to a size the reader chose in system settings, with layouts expected to reflow around it.

The typeface the operating system uses for its own interface, requested by keyword so each platform supplies its native face.

A dark palette whose background is pure black rather than near black, which switches OLED pixels off entirely but makes elements look like they float in a void.

Apple's treatment where foreground colour is derived from the blurred content behind a material, so labels on a translucent panel shift with whatever they sit over.

A rounded square whose corners curve continuously into the sides instead of meeting a circular arc, the shape behind iOS app icons.

The platform flag on a native view that says what it is and how it behaves, the mobile counterpart to a role plus a state, and the thing a custom control has to set by hand.

Moving focus by direction rather than by sequence, so arrow keys, a D-pad, or a TV remote jump to the nearest control up, down, left, or right.