How navigation works
A navigation guide to the rail and classic sidebars, pinning, and switching spaces (cloud / desktop), and the shelf, bottom bar, and unified palette (mobile).
This page explains where everything is on the niyase screen, and what happens when you tap or click each part. niyase doesn't have an in-app guided tour that walks you through the screen step by step. If you get stuck, check this page and the on-screen hints (the first-launch dialog, and the buttons that appear on menus you haven't set up yet).
cloud and desktop share the same screen layout. Mobile reworks the same ideas for a phone screen. They're covered separately below.
cloud / desktop
The icon column on the left (the rail)
Along the very left edge of the screen is a narrow, always-visible column of icons — the rail. Clicking an icon on the rail opens a list of menus to its right. Only one list is open at a time; to see a different category, click a different rail icon.
From top to bottom, the rail contains:
- The space switcher (top of the rail): shows the icon of your current space. Click it to see every space you belong to (see "Switching spaces" below).
- 📌 Pinned items: shows your pinned menus. This icon is always visible, even if you haven't pinned anything yet.
- Category icons: one icon per business area — management, HR, labor, accounting, and so on. Click one to open its menu list on the right and jump straight to the first menu in it. Hover over an icon to see what that category is for.
- The ⚙ icon (at the bottom of the category icons): opens a set of space-wide management menus — access control, audit log, and space settings.
The menu-list column that opens to the right can be collapsed with its own toggle. Collapsing it doesn't disable the rail — clicking a rail icon reopens it.
The utility corner at the bottom of the rail
At the very bottom of the rail sits a cluster of icons: sync, notifications, help, language, theme, the unified palette (search), and the account menu.
| Icon | What it does |
|---|---|
| Sync (desktop only — cloud is always online, so it has no sync icon) | Shows this space's sync status and lets you sync right now |
| Notifications | Opens your notification list |
| Help | Opens the help menu (a link to this site, and a way to bring back the first-launch dialog) |
| Language / theme | Switches the display language, or between light and dark theme |
| Unified palette (search) | Search across menus, plugins, and data by keyword (also opens with Cmd+K / /) |
| Account menu (your avatar) | Opens account settings, log out, and related actions |
Pinning a menu
Hover over any menu item and a 📌 button appears — click it to pin that menu. Once pinned, clicking the 📌 icon at the top of the rail's category list shows all your pinned menus in one click and jumps to the first one.
Pinning doesn't remove the menu from its original category — it stays there too. Pinning is purely a shortcut for surfacing what you use often; it has nothing to do with permissions or which plugins are enabled. Reorder pinned items by dragging them within the pinned list.
Switching spaces
Click the icon at the top of the rail to see every space you belong to (work spaces first, then your personal space). Pick one, and you land exactly where you last left off in that space — not the home screen. The first time you open a space (or before you've visited anywhere in it), you land on its home screen instead.
Choosing the shape of the screen (Modern / Classic)
On cloud and desktop the screen comes in two shapes. You choose one on the Appearance tab of Account settings. It is saved to your account, so other devices open the same way (it takes effect when you go back to the app).
| Shape | What the screen looks like | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Modern (default) | The rail described above plus a menu column that opens to its right. There is no top bar, so the page uses the full height | Going back and forth between the same few menus; reaching a category in one click |
| Classic | A bar across the top and a single-column sidebar on the left. Open any category from the top to find things | Menus you only open now and then, found by scanning from the top |
In Classic, the top bar holds the space switcher on the left, the unified palette (search) in the middle, and notifications, help, language, theme, and the account menu (plus sync on desktop) on the right. The sidebar lists Pinned first, then the categories. Click a category name to open or close it; the category of the page you are on opens by itself. Adding, removing, and reordering pins, and how menus are shown and ordered, work the same as in Modern.
When the window is narrow (under 768px), you get the Modern layout for narrow screens whichever shape you chose.
Mobile
Mobile has no hamburger menu or app bar. Instead, the screen is built from a persistent header, a persistent bottom bar, and two overlay shelves that slide in from either side.
The header
Along the top of the screen sits a breadcrumb reading "Category › Menu," with a notification bell on the right. Tapping the breadcrumb opens the shelf with that category already selected. Tapping the bell opens your notification list.
The shelf (slides in from the left)
Tap the space icon at the bottom-left of the bottom bar, or tap the header breadcrumb, and a shelf slides in from the left. It holds the same content as the cloud/desktop rail and menu list, packed into a drawer: categories, pinned items, the ⚙ icon, and utilities like sync and help — each shown with a persistent label (since touch has no hover). At the very bottom is a bar showing the current space's name; tap it to open the space switcher.
The bottom bar
| Position | Element | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Left end | Space icon (rounded square) | Opens the shelf. A dot appears in the corner if there's a sync problem — red for a niyase-side issue, yellow for something on your end (network, etc.) |
| Center | Home-menu icons (dashboard, tasks, workflow, schedule, etc.) | Tap any icon to jump straight there in one tap. This set is fixed — it never changes based on what you pin |
| Right end | Account icon (circle) | Opens the account shelf from the right |
The button in the center (the unified palette)
The button that floats slightly above the center of the bottom bar is the entry point to the unified palette. What it opens depends on how you interact with it.
| Gesture | What opens |
|---|---|
| Tap | A radial menu fans out around the button with up to six of your most-used menus (pinned items are given priority). Tapping the button itself opens the camera, so you can photograph a receipt on the spot |
| Long-press | Voice input starts immediately, using your device / OS's built-in speech recognition. This prefers on-device processing with no server round-trip, though depending on recognition conditions the OS may fall back to server-side processing on its own |
| Swipe up | The palette's full-screen search opens, where you can type a keyword to search |
The account shelf (slides in from the right)
Tap the account icon at the right end of the bottom bar to open a shelf from the right. Unlike the account menu on cloud/desktop, mobile's account shelf bundles shortcuts to your own settings (editing which categories/menus show, editing pinned items, appearance, palette settings), your profile, security, and notification settings, and account switching / log out — all in a single drawer.
For the differences between the desktop app, the mobile app, and niyase Cloud, see Choosing between the niyase app and niyase Cloud.