Taskbar

The taskbar runs along the bottom of the Browserland desktop. It holds the launch button, a button for each open window (sticky notes are the exception — they stay off the taskbar unless you opt them in), the workspace pager, host status, a fullscreen button, and clock, AI status, update, clipboard, and help chips.

Anatomy

From left to right, the taskbar contains:

Element	What it does
Launch button (+)	By default, left-click launches a terminal on your default host — the local broker unless you pick another under Control Panel → Browser → Hosts (see Hosts-and-Multi-Browser) — and right-click opens the full profile / app menu — a Control Panel toggle can swap the two
Window buttons	One per open window (sticky notes only when opted in — see below) — click to focus, right-click for per-window actions
Pager dots	One dot per workspace — click to switch. From the Workspaces mod, enabled by default (see Workspaces)
Host status	One status chip for a single broker; with several, one aggregate badge that opens the broker menu. A Control Panel option decides whether it shows always, only when a broker needs attention, or never (see Hosts-and-Multi-Browser)
Fullscreen button (⛶)	Toggles the browser into fullscreen
Clock chip	Date & time readout, shown while the Clock mod is enabled
AI status chip	Worst-case health of the major AI providers — click to open the status window. Shown while the AI status mod is enabled; it ships off by default because enabling it lets the broker fetch each provider's public status page, which makes the broker's egress IP visible to those hosts. Turn it on from Control Panel → Mods
Update chip (⬆)	Whether every configured broker is current with upstream. One aggregate chip colors by the worst state (up to date, N behind, N ahead, or N unchecked). Click to open the Update check window, which shows one row per broker and explains why any broker could not be checked. A broker that is behind gets an Update… button on its row, remote ones included: it asks that broker to pull and restart, after a confirmation that names the broker, its commit range and what the restart costs its sessions. Shown while the Update check mod is enabled; it ships off by default, and ticking it on yourself in Control Panel → Mods is your consent for the serving broker to check for updates and to apply one and restart itself, for each of those gates its config does not already own (only that click counts, and no restart is needed). Any broker in the list can be switched on from its row, remote ones behind a confirmation that names the machine. By default the chip hides itself while every configured broker is current
Clipboard chip	Opens (or focuses) the clipboard-history window. Shown while the Clipboard mod is enabled; it ships off by default because clipboards carry secrets, so it captures nothing until you opt in. Turn it on from Control Panel → Mods
Help chip (?)	Opens the in-app interface guide (see Getting-Started)

On a screen 520 px wide or less (a phone, or a very narrow window) the clock chip is hidden and title bars drop the window-id badge, the color button and an idle ⏺ record button so titles stay readable; the MCP button, minimize, × and a record button that is recording or paused stay. On touch screens up to 900 px wide the title-bar buttons are larger.

Window buttons

Each open window has a button on the taskbar — except sticky notes, which by default stay off the taskbar and are reached from the + menu instead. If you'd rather have them there, the Sticky mod's show sticky-note windows on the taskbar setting (Control Panel → Mods) gives every open note a button too, applied live to notes already open.

• Click a button to focus and raise that window. If the window is minimized, clicking it restores it; if it lives on another workspace, Browserland switches to that workspace first. Clicking the button of the window that is already focused and on top minimizes it — so the same button toggles a window in and out of view.
• A button marked ↗ is a terminal opened in its own browser window (Open in new window): clicking it brings that browser window to the front instead of restoring it. A button marked ⇄ is a terminal another device controls; its tooltip names the device. See Window-Types.
• Right-click a button for per-window actions:

Action	Effect
Focus	Bring the window into view and raise it, restoring it if minimized: a tiled window takes you to its workspace, a floating one is brought to the workspace you are on (a closed window reopens on its own workspace)
Minimize / Restore	Hide the window to the taskbar, or bring it back
Close	Soft-close the window (a terminal's shell keeps running; a non-empty sticky note reopens from the + menu; a text editor keeps its file on disk)
Terminate	Terminals only — hard-kill the shell process tree

The taskbar menu does not have a send-to-workspace item — to move a window to another workspace, use its title-bar right-click menu (see Workspaces). For the difference between Close, Terminate, and Delete, see Floating-Window-Controls.

Label components

Each window button — and the matching window title bar — shows a label built from up to four components:

Component	Example	Notes
window id	#42	The broker-assigned window number. On the taskbar it is dimmed and auto-hides on a very narrow button; in a window title bar it stays a leading badge
host	myhost:	The machine the session reports running on. The colon appears only when the host sits immediately before the title
title	claude	The program or agent title (or session <id> when it has none)
pid	[12345]	The process id, in brackets

By default the label reads #id host: title [pid] with the pid hidden — for example #42 myhost: claude.

To change it, open Control Panel → Windows → Taskbar / title labels. Each component has a checkbox to show or hide it, and the rows can be reordered — drag a row, or use its ↑/↓ buttons — so the label follows the order you choose. At least one component always stays ticked (you cannot hide them all), and a ticked component that has no value for a given window (for example the host on an app window that has none) is simply left out — if that would leave the label empty, the title is shown instead, so the label is never blank. The hover tooltip always lists everything regardless of these settings. Like the other display toggles, this preference is stored per broker host and shared with your other browsers viewing that host.

MCP scope badge

A terminal tagged with an MCP scope (see MCP-and-AI-Agents) shows the scope as a small blue badge after its label. A window an MCP admin agent launched, or whose scope/mode it last set, also shows an amber admin badge (tooltip Set by an MCP admin agent; any edit you make in the window's MCP menu clears it). The order is scope, admin, then any workspace badge. A long scope is cut short with …; the hover tooltip names it in full (scope <name>).

Items for other workspaces

By default, buttons for windows on other workspaces still appear (dimmed) so you can jump to them. To show only the active workspace's windows in the taskbar, turn on Hide taskbar items from other workspaces under Control Panel → Windows → Workspaces. It is saved with the broker serving the page, so it applies to every browser viewing that broker.

The launch button (+)

The launch button doubles as a Start button.

By default:

• Left-click launches a terminal using your default host's default profile. The default host is the local broker unless you pick another under Control Panel → Browser → Hosts (see Hosts-and-Multi-Browser).
• Right-click opens the full launch menu: the launchable terminal profiles plus the other window types, in registration order — control panel, help, task manager, file manager, text editor, sticky note, scratchpad, session recorder — with more entries — clipboard history, an AI-provider status monitor or the Update check window — when the matching mods are enabled (all three ship off; see Window-Types for the authoritative list). Every broker leads with a live status row (its state, and the old chip's click actions — log in, take over the lease, or hide/show its windows, which keeps the menu open) with its profiles below it, so you can launch on a remote host from here. A broker that is down, wants a password or is hidden shows only its status row; one that hosts no terminals (a hub started with terminals off) shows terminals off — launches nothing here, and a quick-launch whose default host is such a broker opens a No host can launch here notice instead of launching elsewhere. With several hosts attached, the taskbar's aggregate broker badge opens this same menu (see Hosts-and-Multi-Browser).

Swapping the click gestures

If you open the picker more often than you use the one-click default, turn on Control Panel → Desktop → Start button → "Left-click opens the profile menu (right-click quick-launches)". With it enabled the two gestures swap: left-click opens the launch menu and right-click quick-launches your default host's default profile. The native browser context menu never appears either way. The toggle is off by default and, like the button label, applies to every browser viewing this broker: it is saved with the broker that serves the page (its /state), not per host.

Open in folder…

The right-click menu also includes an Open in folder… item under each host's profiles. It opens a directory picker on that host, then starts that host's default profile rooted at the folder you choose. The picker browses the host you'll launch on (not your local machine), so the chosen path exists there. Cancel the picker to do nothing.

Renaming the button

The button shows + by default. To change its label, set Control Panel → Desktop → Start button. Leave it blank to fall back to +. Only the visible label changes — the click gestures follow whichever mapping you have set (see Swapping the click gestures above).

Fullscreen

The fullscreen button (⛶) toggles the browser into fullscreen and back. You can also bind a key to it — the default is Ctrl+Alt+f for the Toggle fullscreen action. See Keyboard-Shortcuts.

Pager dots

The pager dots on the right of the taskbar (left of the host chips) are one-click workspace switchers, and their right-click menus rename or remove workspaces and toggle names vs. numbers. They come from the Workspaces mod (enabled by default), so the dots are absent if you turn it off. They are covered in full under Workspaces.

To keep workspaces but reclaim the space the dots take, turn on Hide the workspace pager from the taskbar under Control Panel → Windows → Workspaces. Only the pager goes — the chip badges and dimming, the shortcuts, and Send to workspace all stay, and the workspace menu (right-click an empty part of the taskbar or the desktop) still switches, adds, renames, and removes workspaces.

Broker status chip

The host-status area shows a chip for your broker (or one aggregate badge once you have several). By default it is always there, but it is only an indicator — every broker also has a live row in the start (+) menu carrying the same actions — so Control Panel → Desktop → Broker status chip lets you turn it down:

Show	Effect
Always	The default, and the same as before this option existed
Only when a broker needs attention	The chip appears only while a broker is unreachable, wants a password, or is held by another browser — or, for a host reached from server through this broker, while its terminals cannot connect (the chip's tooltip says why) — and disappears again once nothing is wrong
Never	The chip is never drawn

A broker you hid yourself never counts as needing attention, so parking one you don't want right now keeps the chip quiet in attention mode. Nothing becomes unreachable when the chip is gone: right-click the + button and every broker is listed with its state and its log-in / take-over / un-hide action, and the same hide toggle is a checkbox on each host's row under Control Panel → Browser → Hosts. Attention mode is also deliberately slow to fire — a broker has to miss two polls (about four seconds) before it counts as down, so a single dropped poll never makes the chip flicker into view.

The setting is shown on the local broker's tab and applies to every browser viewing this broker: it is saved with the broker that serves the page (its /state), not per host. See Hosts-and-Multi-Browser for what each chip state means.