Opening apps and previews

Where an app or preview opens, its header buttons, installing an app on your home screen or computer, why a preview cannot be shared, and live cards for app links.

Updated 21 October 2026

Opening an app or a preview link on a computer puts it where the chat was, in the middle of the window. The search bar stays at the top and the chat list narrows to icons to give the app more room. The app itself runs edge to edge in that space, and everything you can do to it sits in the header above it. For a published app that is Copy URL, which copies the app's address so you can paste it anywhere, a button that opens it in a new browser tab, Refresh to reload it, Share, and Open in workspace, which takes you to the app's own page on the Apps and Files tab, where it opens with the list of apps and files folded away so the app still has the whole pane. Close it with the X in that header, and the chat comes back with the chat list as it was. Pressing Escape closes it too. On a phone, the Feedback view can open over the app: there the first Escape closes Feedback and a second Escape closes the viewer. Anything else you open from a chat lands in the same place, whether you open it from the message or from its card in the artifacts panel on the right: a widget, a document, a text file, a diagram, a presentation. On a computer the chat you opened it from stays beside it, on the replies to that card, and the chat's name at the top of the header opens and closes it (see the Library page's "Talking about it beside it"). On a phone an app fills the screen, with the same header stacked above it. Presenting a deck still goes full screen, since that is the point of presenting.

You may see fewer of those buttons than someone else does. Open in workspace appears only if you are a member of the workspace that owns the app, and Share only if you can change that app's sharing settings, which means a workspace owner or admin. Refresh is there in every case but the one below.

A published app you open from a link to it, rather than from its card, also has Add to project in its header, which files the app into one of your projects. On a computer, a link to a published app's own address, rather than to a page inside it, still opens in the middle of the window where the chat was, but with a different header. That header always has Add to project and an X, has Share and Delete only if you are an owner or admin of the workspace that owns the app, and has no Copy URL, new tab button or Refresh. The X or Escape closes it, and the chat comes back with the chat list as it was.

A preview that is not a published app shows neither Copy URL nor the new tab button. It carries a Preview label next to its name instead, and only Refresh beside it. A preview runs on the agent's own computer and opens here in Bolter for the people it has been shared with: showing it in a chat shares it with that chat, and the label on its card says exactly who can open it. Its address is not a link you can pass to anyone outside that: sending it to a colleague who cannot open it gets them nothing. Point at the Preview label and it says so, and offers the one route to something you can share, a button that asks the agent in that chat to convert the preview into an app. Pinning a preview never does that by itself. The agent replies in the chat as usual, and once it creates and publishes the app you get Copy URL, the new tab button and Refresh with it, plus Share if you can manage apps in the agent's workspace and Open in workspace if you are a member of it, and everyone who could open the preview can open the app. The preview's card in the artifacts panel agrees with all of this: it offers Refresh, but no way to open the preview in a browser tab. A published app's card still does.

Putting an app on your home screen or your computer

A published app can be installed like an app of its own: it gets an icon on your phone's home screen or in your computer's app list, and opens full screen in its own window, with no browser address bar around it. It opens straight to the app, not to Bolter.

First open the app in its own browser tab, with the new tab button in the app's header or by pasting its address. Then:

• On Android, open Chrome's menu and tap Install app. On some phones it is called Add to Home screen, followed by Install.
• On iPhone or iPad, tap the Share button in Safari and choose Add to Home Screen.
• On a computer, in Chrome or Edge, click the install icon at the right of the address bar, or open the browser's menu and choose Install. The app then appears with your other apps and can be pinned to the taskbar or dock.

The icon is the app's own, and it changes when the app's icon does. Who can open the installed app is the same as who can open the app's address: if the app is not shared publicly, you are asked to sign in to Bolter the first time, as you would be in a browser tab.

An app built before installing was available may not offer it yet. Ask the agent that built it to make the app installable.

When the agent changes an app you have open

An app or preview you have open is never reloaded underneath you. A Bolter-built app notices by itself when the agent, or a code run, has rebuilt it. For a plain page that cannot tell, the agent tells Bolter it changed it. Either way:

• If you have not clicked or typed in the app since it loaded, it updates straight away. A Bolter-built app keeps the page you were on and your place on it.
• If you have been using it, nothing moves. A "Reload for the new version" button appears over the app, and the update waits until you press it, so a half-filled form or the run you were watching stays put.

The agent reading or writing the app's data, running tests, restarting the app without changing it, or checking on a running process does not reload anything. Refresh in the header always loads the latest version.

Links to work inside an app

A link to a page inside an app, posted in a chat, can unfold into a live card when the app supports it: a coding session, a request, a run. The card shows where the work stands in a short label (for example "Fixing", "In review, round 2" or "Approved"), a row of steps with the current one marked, the thing the work produced, such as a pull request, and who is working on it or reviewing it, with their picture.

The card keeps itself current. When the work moves, the app tells Bolter and the card changes in place within about a second, without anyone posting again. A label that changes quickly is held long enough to read, and a screen reader announces the change once it settles. A card on screen changes only when the app tells Bolter. If that message is lost, the card stays as it was until the app's next change, and shows the latest state the next time it is loaded, for example when you open the chat again.

Pressing the card opens the page it describes in the app. A card only ever shows what the app lets you see: someone who cannot see that page gets the app's ordinary card instead, which says nothing the link does not.