History

One screen shows the picture sideways, or upside down: turn it until the number reads Each screen now behaves like a picture stuck to its glass, with the number and the buttons in the same frame as the picture — so the number is upright exactly when the picture is, and turning the device until it reads is the whole fix. It also settles which of the two ways to lay a device on its side, which the plan's Horizontal alone could not.

david committed Sep 27, 2026

A download page, with a code for the App Store The app now offers a code to the person beside you, and it leads here rather than to a store, so that one code serves a phone of either kind and so that this page can be corrected without shipping a build. Android has a section and no code, deliberately. There is no Play listing, so any code would lead nowhere — the section says what the app will do when it arrives and what it will have to ask for. Support draws the distinction the app makes people meet twice: the code that gets you the app, and the code that gets you into a room, which only works on a device that already has it.

david committed Sep 27, 2026

The app now says which way to turn a device, when it can tell The sideways-picture answer was written when the only thing the app did about it was look sideways. It now asks you to turn the device — except for one case it cannot see, a device lying flat with its screen pinned, and the answer says so rather than leaving someone waiting for a prompt that will not come.

david committed Sep 20, 2026

Two answers for what three iPads on a table actually did A photograph of the test cards across three iPads turned up both: two of them were running in a window rather than filling the screen, and one was lying flat when the layout had asked for it upright. Neither is obvious from the screens themselves — one looks like a delivery problem, the other like a bug — so both now have an answer that says what to do about it.

david committed Sep 20, 2026

A room is where the devices are; a show is what plays in it The app now names the two things apart, so the pages have to as well: you open or join a *room*, and a *show* plays in it. The quick start says which is which at the point where someone first meets both. Also answers the question that made the distinction necessary — whether the show can be changed without everyone joining again. It can, it always could, and the answer says what to expect when you do: the new pictures have to be handed out before the show will start, and the arrangement is worked out afresh because differently shaped pictures can want the devices laid out differently.

david committed Sep 20, 2026

Revert "Point the issues link at where the repository actually lives" This reverts commit 7efa5741fe7dd461895baaf48b1d9b86bbacad65.

david committed Sep 20, 2026

Point the issues link at where the repository actually lives The push to the old address answers with "This repository moved", so the link on the support page was one redirect away from being wrong. Same repository, current name.

david committed Sep 20, 2026

The card that says what is wrong Polyptych now comes with a test-pattern show, so there is something to start before any pictures have been added — and, mainly, so that an arrangement that looks wrong can be photographed rather than described. The answer reads it element by element, because that is how the card is used: letters out of sequence mean the devices are in the wrong places, a step where a line crosses a seam means a screen's measurements are out, an egg instead of a circle means a scale rather than a position, the wrong corner shape means a device held the wrong way round, and the greys and colour bars are the screens themselves rather than anything the app did. Also says it at the top, where people are told what to include when they report a problem: one photograph of that card across the screens is worth more than a paragraph describing what looked off.

david committed Sep 20, 2026

Video, an Android guest, and the two things they change about privacy Support gains four answers about video — how to use one, why every device has to be given the whole file before anything starts, why the sound is muted, and what to do when one screen drifts — and one about Android, framed as what it is: in progress, not released, and a guest rather than a host. It also says up front that an Android screen has to be told its own size, because Android exposes neither the screen's physical dimensions nor the device's reliably, and that the border estimate is what decides whether the seams line up. Two changes were not optional. The Privacy Policy described what leaves your device as "pictures"; a whole video file now leaves it too, and is cached on every device that receives it. And the plain connection that lets a non-Apple device join is **not encrypted**, unlike Apple's own local networking — so the network you are on is now part of who you are trusting. Both are stated plainly rather than left to be discovered, and the effective date moves with them. Conditions follow: what you show includes a video, and the unencrypted door is named there too. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Dag committed Sep 2, 2026

Answer the new questions: the fleet preview, sharing a GIF in, per-turn timing Five new answers — trying a show across an imagined fleet, sending a GIF in from another app (GifMotion included), per-turn hold and transition times, what the device-by-device transition does, and where to edit a saved show — plus the hosting device no longer having to be one of the screens. Corrected the quick start: building a show is Shows → New show now, and the eye opens the fleet preview rather than a single-screen run. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Dag committed Sep 1, 2026

Say "show", and answer the language, appearance and rotation questions The interface no longer says "mosaic", so neither does the documentation: Start a show, Join a show, and "a show" wherever the pages described the shared thing. "A mosaic physically wider than that resolution" becomes "an arrangement", which is what that sentence is actually about. Three new answers in the FAQ — the app's seven languages, that it follows the device's light or dark appearance, and that rotation is free everywhere except the screen showing the picture. Corrected the start button to "Start the show", and gave the picture limit its real ceiling of 48. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Dag committed Sep 1, 2026

Add a support page Quick start, and the questions worth answering because the answers are not guessable: why a device is turned sideways, why the seams may be slightly out on an unrecognised model, why the picture is soft on a wide mosaic, why "Start the show" waits, and what a long GIF actually becomes. Linked from the home page alongside the policy and the conditions. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

david committed Sep 1, 2026

Add the privacy policy and conditions of use Polyptych's privacy story is not the usual "everything stays on your device": it does send your pictures, to every device that joins the mosaic, over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The policy says so plainly, and spells out the consequence — anyone holding the six-character code, or able to see the QR on the hosting screen, receives them. Nothing reaches us or the internet either way. Also covers what else crosses between devices (device name, screen dimensions, draw instructions, clock timestamps), the camera being used only to scan a code, and where saved shows live on disk. The conditions are the plain-language essentials: free and as-is, your pictures stay yours, you are responsible for what you show and for having the right to show it, and the join code is disambiguation rather than security. Home page rewritten from the placeholder to introduce the app and link both. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

david committed Sep 1, 2026

Initial Home page

nowheremanmail committed Sep 1, 2026