The Floating Toolbar: Notifications and Comfort Mode

Every participant on a live public Retro sees a small floating toolbar in the bottom-right corner. It stays out of the way until you need it and never overlaps your notes. The three controls are Notifications, Comfort Mode, and Help.

Notifications

The bell opens a quiet in-app inbox for things that happen on this Retro while you're looking at it. Manager Toolkit used to fire toast pop-ups for every event, which drowned out the conversation. The inbox replaces those with a silent log you can dip into when something changes:

• Phase advanced - a heads-up when the facilitator moves the Retro from Draft to Vote, or Vote to Discuss.
• Everyone is done - when every participant has marked themselves Done in the current phase, the bell shakes briefly and an entry lands in the inbox so the facilitator knows it's time to move on.
• New comments / reactions on your notes - pings you when someone interacts with a note you wrote, with a direct link back to the note.
• AI events - when an AI suggestion (Generate Ideas, Action Suggestion) finishes, you'll see a row confirming it.

The bell shake

A new notification gives the bell a single, gentle shake plus a small unread count in the corner. There's no full-screen toast, no chime, no auto-pop modal. Click the bell to view the list; click an entry to jump back to the linked note or Action.

Pausing notifications for this Retro

Inside the inbox header there's a "Pause notifications for this Retro" toggle. Flipping it stops new entries from being added for the rest of your session. The setting is per-browser, per-Retro, so a noisy Retro doesn't affect the next one you join.

Comfort Mode

The lightbulb toggles between dark (the default) and light comfort mode. Both keep the Retro's chosen theme colour for headers, badges, and accents - only the page background tint changes. Use light mode in bright meeting rooms where the dark canvas can wash out under glare, or stick with dark if you prefer the original look.

The preference is per-browser (saved in localStorage), not per-Retro, so once you've picked your preferred mode it stays with you across every Retro you join.

Help

The question-mark icon opens this help centre in a new tab so you can look something up without losing your place in the Retro.