Keep several screens open at once in the desktop app

In the desktop app you can keep several screens open at once, the way you would with browser tabs. Bills in one, the General Ledger in another, your inbox in a third, and switching between them is instant.

The shortcuts below are written with Cmd, which is the Mac key. On Windows press Ctrl in its place, so Ctrl+T opens a tab and Ctrl+W closes one. Ctrl+Tab is the same on both.

Opening a tab

The tab strip sits along the top of the window, with a + button at its end.

• Click + (or press Cmd+T) to open a new tab.
• Hold Cmd and click any link (or click it with your middle mouse button). It opens behind what you are looking at, so your place is never lost.
• Hold Shift and click to open it and go straight there.

However you open one, the new tab appears at the right-hand end of the strip. Drag it if you want it somewhere else.

Moving between tabs

Click a tab, or use Cmd+1 through Cmd+8 to jump to one by position. Cmd+9 always goes to the last tab, and Ctrl+Tab steps through them in order.

The back and forward control in the sidebar belongs to whichever tab you are in, so going back never drags another tab with it.

Rearranging tabs

Drag a tab along the strip to move it. The others part around it as you go, so where it is going to land is always what you can already see. Dropping a tab does not switch to it, and the screen you were on stays in front.

Cmd+Shift+Left and Cmd+Shift+Right do the same thing without the mouse, moving the tab you are looking at one place along. Both stop at the ends rather than wrapping around.

The order is remembered with the tabs themselves, so it survives quitting the app. Bear in mind that Cmd+1 through Cmd+9 go by position, so moving a tab changes which number reaches it.

Closing a tab

Hover a tab and click the ✕, or press Cmd+W. There is always at least one tab open, so the last one cannot be closed.

Your tabs are remembered. Quit the app and reopen it and they come back the way you left them.

What a tab keeps

A tab you switch away from stays where it was. Scroll position, an expanded row, a bill you were halfway through editing: all of it is still there when you come back, and nothing is reloading in the background while you are elsewhere.

TALISK_HQ keeps the six most recently used tabs live. Beyond that the ones you have not touched for longest are set down and rebuilt when you next open them, which takes a moment and loses nothing.

Each tab has its own mailbox

If you have more than one email account connected, every tab holds its own. The account switcher in the sidebar always shows the mailbox of the tab you are looking at, and switching there changes only that tab. Other tabs keep theirs, so a support inbox sits open beside your personal one.

To read two mailboxes at once:

1. Press + or Cmd+T to open a second tab. It starts on the same mailbox as the tab you opened it from.
2. In the new tab, switch accounts in the sidebar as you always have.
3. Click between the tabs. Each keeps its own mailbox, and the sidebar follows whichever tab is in front.

A tab shows its account's inbox, sent mail, starred mail, labels and search, and Check mail fetches that account. On mail tabs the account name sits beside the tab title in the strip, so two inboxes are told apart at a glance.

Unread counts on a mail tab

A tab showing any mail screen carries the number of unread messages sitting in that tab's inbox, so an account with mail waiting is obvious without switching to it.

• It is the same number the sidebar shows beside Inbox for that account.
• It covers the whole mail section, not just the inbox: a tab left on Drafts, Starred or an open thread still shows it.
• It counts down as you read, and a tab with nothing unread carries no badge at all.

If you keep a support inbox open in one tab and your own in another, this is how you see which one needs you without clicking between them.

Anything you write from a tab is sent from that tab's account by default. You can still change the sender on an individual message with the From picker.

If a tab's account is later disconnected, the tab moves to your current account rather than showing you a different mailbox under the old name.

Books are shared across every tab

TALISK_HQ works in one book at a time, and that applies to the whole app rather than to each tab. Switching book moves every open tab to the new book at once.

This is deliberately different from mailboxes. Reading the wrong inbox is a nuisance; recording a bill against the wrong company is a real problem, so there is no way to put two books on screen at once inside one app.

Because that affects screens you may not be looking at, TALISK_HQ asks you to confirm whenever more than one tab is open, and tells you how many tabs are about to move.

Working in two books at the same time

Open the second book in your web browser. The browser signs in separately from the desktop app, so the two hold their own book independently and neither disturbs the other. Uploads, exports and connecting an account all stay with the book that window is on.

What does not work is a second browser tab in the same browser as the first. Both share one session, so switching book in one changes the other, and TALISK_HQ will stop that tab and ask you to reload it rather than let it record something against the wrong book.