Devices and installation

You can use Space in a browser or install it as a web app on your device. Installation adds an app window or icon for an existing Space; it does not download the personal machine or create another home.

Install from your browser

Install Space from your Space’s own address, the one your browser shows once Home is open. The front door at kinra.space cannot be installed. The installed app opens your own address directly and never passes through the front door.

Open Your account → Settings → Keep Space close for the instructions appropriate to your browser. If Install Kinra Space appears, choose it and complete the browser’s prompt.

Browser or device	Manual installation path
Safari on iPhone or iPad	Share → Add to Home Screen; leave Open as Web App enabled when offered.
Safari on Mac	File → Add to Dock.
Chrome or Edge	Use the install icon in the address bar or the browser’s installation menu.

Open the installed Space icon afterward. The Space app’s window may need its own sign-in; choose Come inside. If an installation action is unavailable, continue in the browser. Browser and operating-system support determine which controls are offered.

A Playwright capture at phone width with fictional content. It demonstrates responsive layout, not acceptance on a physical phone or every installed browser.

Work in a small window

Use the navigation drawer to switch pages and workspaces. Open it with the menu control at the start of the topbar. In the installed app you can also pull it in from the left edge of the screen, and close it by dragging the drawer or the dimmed page beside it. The edge gesture is deliberately not offered in a browser tab, where the same movement is the browser’s own Back.

Ctrl+B (⌘B on a Mac) also opens and closes the drawer with a supported keyboard. Opening it moves keyboard focus into navigation, to the current page’s item or the first available item; the page behind waits until it closes. Close it by tapping the dimmed page, pressing Escape, dragging it away, or using the chord again. These return focus to the menu control; choosing a page moves focus to that page instead. It closes itself whenever the window becomes wide enough for the sidebar to be a column again, so folding and unfolding a device leaves nothing behind.

Where the topbar is too narrow for a workspace’s views side by side, they fold into one menu named for the view you’re on. With a file or a conversation open on a phone, the menu shows the view’s icon, so the file’s or conversation’s name stays readable beside it. In Files the tree and the open file take the screen in turn: choose a file to open it, and Back to Files to return to the tree with the file still open and any unsaved changes kept. New file, New folder and Upload stay at the top of the tree, and Move to… in a file’s menu moves it without dragging. The drawer holds the sidebar’s rail and its column of Live and Pinned. When a phone is sideways, the column scrolls on its own beside the rail, and where the rail is taller than the screen the drawer scrolls to reach its account controls.

In a small window, Show Kin, at the end of the topbar on every page, opens Kin’s panel as a sheet that rises from the bottom of the screen. Its message box stays above the keyboard. On a touch screen it opens on the conversation; tap the message box when you want to write. Pull the sheet down by its grip or the bar at its top, or choose Hide Kin, to put it away. See Talk with Kin from any page.

The layout adapts to the available width when you resize, rotate or fold. On a touch keyboard, Enter adds a line and the corner arrow, Send message, submits your message. The composer sits directly above the keyboard, and command and dialog buttons stay reachable while it is open. With the draft empty, Recall last message beside Attach files brings back what you sent last, which is what the Up arrow does on a desktop keyboard.

On an installed app the page starts below a solid status bar in your appearance’s color and reaches under the home indicator, and under the notch when the phone is on its side. Everything you read or tap is held clear of them, and the composer rests just above the home indicator, or just above the keyboard while you type.

Appearance follows Settings → Appearance, and motion respects your device’s reduced-motion preference. File sharing is offered only when the browser supports it; Download remains the fallback.

Alerts in a native app

A compatible native app can offer Review request on a waiting notification. It opens that exact conversation; review and answer in Space. While Space can observe the request, opening the conversation, or learning that its request was answered, cancelled or ended, removes that request’s notification while preserving newer requests and finished alerts. Older apps keep their existing notification behavior.

Configured homes can also send alerts while a development iPhone app is closed. Turn on Settings → Alerts → System notifications and allow them on the device. Delivery follows the most recently used enrolled iPhone; in an actively used window, requests show as in-page notes and finished work stays marked in Live. This is limited to configured development builds, with no public native-app download offered here. Mac, browser installations, older apps and unconfigured homes retain their local alerts. A remote notification already queued for delivery may still arrive after its request ends; opening it checks the conversation’s current state and never answers for you.

Move between devices

Open the same Space address on another device to reach the same machine, files and conversations. An ordinary visit opens Home; reloading returns to the page you were using in that tab. If Safari or the native app restores a page after the system ended its process, Space also returns to the view that tab kept. If the tab has lost that record, it opens Home.

Chat and Show Kin take up the same live conversation in Kin’s workspace, including one another device is using.

A conversation opens for watching while another client holds the keyboard. When you return to use a watching page and the keyboard is free, it takes it automatically. If another device still holds it, choose Take the keyboard to write here. That device keeps its unsent words and watches in turn. Kin’s running work continues through the change.

Each workspace keeps its own conversation draft. On returning to a device, an untouched message box picks up text and ready file attachments saved from the other device. Words you typed on this device stay. If those exact words were sent elsewhere, the stale draft clears once the sent message appears. A message caught by a keyboard change is either shown once or returned to its draft with a notice that nothing was sent.

Appearance, sidebar choices and pinned workspaces also refresh when you return. Save file edits before changing devices: a file editor’s unsaved text has a different lifetime from a conversation draft. See saving an edit.

The terminal on a touch screen

The Terminal adds a row of keys a phone keyboard does not have: Escape, Tab, Control, Alt, the arrows, |, ~, /, - and Paste. Control and Alt are held for the next key you type, so Control then c sends Ctrl-C.

Select lays the visible rows and recent scrollback over the terminal as plain text, so your device’s own selection handles can copy from it. Tap Select again to type. A long press also opens your device’s own selection menu. When the runtime offers a selection and the browser will not take it without a tap of your own, Copy selection appears in the topbar.

The terminal keeps its size while the keyboard is up. Other views of the same shell — another device, or a terminal on the machine itself — are not reflowed by your keyboard appearing.

Reconnect after going offline

Kin and files live on the machine, so Space needs a connection to reach them. An offline launch shows a reconnect page. It does not display cached private files or conversation history and does not queue messages to send later.

After reconnecting and signing in if needed, use Continue or Session history… to return to the session. Unsent message text has a per-tab recovery copy; save file edits before leaving, because file-editor drafts are not that recovery copy. If your machine cannot save a draft, the tab keeps it and Space holds off reloading itself for an update; if the tab cannot keep it either, Space asks before you close or reload the page.

Coming back to the installed app after it has been in the background reconnects Kin and the terminal without waiting: Space does not sit through a retry delay when you are looking at it, and it replaces a connection that only looks alive after a longer absence. Unsent words are written to your machine as the Space app goes into the background, so they survive a force quit.

A machine restart can interrupt work even though a browser disconnect alone does not. See Terminal and machine.