Software should be something you own, not something you are lent.
Almost everything now asks for an account, needs a connection, watches what you do, and can be taken away or changed without you. None of that is necessary. It is there because it pays.
So the things made here are built the other way round: one file, no dependencies, no account, no network, nothing counted, nothing for sale inside. Small enough to keep, simple enough to understand, and yours once you have it.
Given away because a tool that costs nothing to copy should cost nothing to have.
Always free, always fair.
Free software under the GNU GPL v3: use it, change it, share it — what is built from it stays free. Terms
An account is a name and a password. It locks the folders you choose to lock, and nothing else — the desk is yours with or without one. Lose the password, lose what it locked.
How the desk is drawn
Background
The text on the desk
The bar of tools
Where the bar sits
Both bars
Every door an app asked for, as ara saw it from the room it opened — never from what the app says. The last 200 are kept.
One timeOngoing
Apps you allow here may reach the addresses they name, whenever they want, without asking each time. Nothing may until you allow it, app by app.
ara names where an app may reach and holds it there. What it sends to an address you allowed is its own.
An app that asks for them is listed here. Off, it cannot reach them at all.
While it is on, that app runs with the desk’s own trust: it can read what the desk keeps. Switch it off and it is a stranger again.
Leave nothing behind
At its own address, ara counts: it says one word to share.circlesinsquare.com — open, here, bake, save, load — with your time zone and a random token that lives as long as the tab. Nothing else, and nothing you wrote. A baked file says nothing to anyone, ever.
There is no support desk and no ticket system. Mail arrives at a real inbox and gets read.
If something broke while you were using it, say what you were doing and what device you were on.
No code to write. Hand one of these to any assistant that writes HTML, say what you want, and drag the file it gives you onto the desk.
A desktop in a single HTML file. No installation, no account, no server. Open the page and it is there, with its tools inside it.
Anything. Drag a file onto the desk, or use File › Add a file. Look opens almost everything — writing, spreadsheets, pictures, PDFs, sound, film, archives, books, and what it cannot read it shows you byte by byte. What nothing opens, the desk keeps anyway and hands back exactly as it came: right-click › Hand it back. It will only ever refuse for room, never for the kind of thing something is.
In this browser, on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere. To carry it: File › Bake ara writes the desk, your work and every tool into one file that opens anywhere with nothing to import. File › Save ara writes a smaller file of your work only; Bring her back puts it back onto any ara.
Yes — if you clear your browsing data, use a private window, or switch device, and on Safari if you do not open it for about a week. A baked file on your own disk is the thing nothing can clear.
Right-click a folder and choose Make safe. What is inside is encrypted with your password — properly, so it cannot be read even by opening the browser's storage. The names stay visible. A forgotten password is final: nothing is kept anywhere to recover it from. The desk lock, by contrast, is a curtain: it hides the desk, it does not encrypt it.
Only where you say. Every app starts offline. An errand goes one time: it names its one address, you say yes, it runs in a sealed room the browser holds to that address, and it is gone when it answers. An app you set to ongoing, in Settings › Permissions, may reach the addresses it names while it is open — the desk asks once a session, its window says which mode it is in, and Settings keeps a record of every door it opened and when. The desk bounds where, never what: what an app sends to an address you allowed is its own.
Yes, with the file. Bake the desk into a folder that already syncs — Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Google Drive — and open that file on the other machine; everything is there. On a phone, open ara from its address and use File › Bring her back to pick the same file. Bake again before you leave a device: the file is a picture of the moment it was made, and work done after it is not in it. One person, two devices, taking turns — two people on one file will lose each other’s work.
Yes. On Android everything works as on a computer. On an iPhone, Apple does not let a file saved to the phone run as a program, so you open ara from its address, bake, and the bake opens in Safari. That is Apple's decision, not ours.
The page has to load once. After that it runs entirely on your device.
Yes, through the same door the tools here use — nothing built in is privileged. An app is one HTML file that says hello to the desk; from then on it can ask for its settings and your files, save what it makes, and put its own menus in the bar. Help › Build for ara carries the whole of it, ready to hand to an assistant if you do not code. Drag your file onto the desk and it opens as an app, exactly as ours do.
Yes — for anything at all. It is free software under the GNU GPL v3: take it, change it, build on it, even sell what you make. The one condition is that what you build from it stays free too, source and all. An app that only speaks to the desk is your own separate program, under any licence you like.
A hairline in the glass. Small, permanent, and eventually the light gets through.
Say what you were doing, what you expected, and what happened instead — and the device and browser you were on. It goes straight to the person who made the desk, and nothing is published without asking you first.
Send it
This opens your mail app with the message ready to send.
Gathering the tools…