Three panes. Every change saves immediately and repaints the board, so there is no save button to forget.
Open it from the menu bar popover, or hold the dial on the pad.
The pad, drawn as it actually is, with the six Agent keys showing their current colours. Click any key to see what it does and change its keycap.
The name you give the pad is used everywhere OpenBoard refers to it — the popover header, the Device pane, the disconnected message. Worth setting if you have more than one Mac.
Every key other than the six Agent keys is yours to bind. The defaults:
| approve / reject | answer the permission prompt in the session you are looking at |
| type snippet | send a saved piece of text |
| new Terminal tab | what it says |
| tap to dictate | push-to-talk |
| fun mode | the party trick, see below |
| the dial | press for the popover, hold for Settings |
Every state, with its colour, its effect and its brightness:
| State | When |
|---|---|
| idle | session open, nothing running |
| working | a turn is running |
| awaiting | blocked on a permission prompt |
| stalled | an idle prompt fired |
| done | finished, and you have not been back |
| error | the turn failed |
| ended | session closed |
The ▶ beside each row plays it on the pad. A colour at 55% on an emissive key is not a swatch at 55% opacity, so the only honest preview is the hardware.
Keep finished sessions lit until you go back is on by default and is the behaviour most worth understanding: green holds until you send that session something, so work that finished while you were away is still visible when you return.
Which events fire the ring. All three on by default — a chat finishing, one needing you, one failing.
Ten built-in animations you can fire at any time. The first three are the ones the board uses on its own; the rest are there because the hardware can:
| Completion lap | green snake, then a slow fade — 5.0s |
| Question lap | amber snake, then a fade — 3.9s |
| Error heartbeat | red double-beats — 3.0s |
| Rainbow spin | the full hue wheel, fast — 6.0s |
| Police lights | red and blue, alternating hard — 3.1s |
| Snake chase | a slow snake through five colours — 13.0s |
| Sunrise | deep red climbing to daylight — 6.2s |
| Heartbeat | two quick beats, then a rest, repeating — 4.3s |
| Strobe | white, hard on and off — 1.3s |
| Slow breathe | cyan to magenta, long and calm — 8.0s |
Playing one takes over the ring briefly, then the real board comes back.
Takes over the whole pad — status included — for the length of a song, driving the lights against a beat grid derived from the audio. See the-final-countdown for how songs are mapped and how to add your own.
Connection at the top: what the pad is called, and whether it is live.
Permissions, each with an Open button that lands on the right System Settings pane. Automation can be granted in place. Every permission takes effect after OpenBoard restarts, which the pane says because a grant that appears to do nothing is the most common reason people conclude the app is broken.
Key order shows whether it has been confirmed and when. Three states, and the middle one matters: not checked (running on the assumed order), checked — the standard order, or custom order recorded with the slots that moved.
Version shows the build and when it last checked for an update. Updates install in place, which is what keeps permissions and hooks working — see below.
Files reveals your settings and log in Finder.
OpenBoard checks once a day and installs updates in place. Take them: replacing the bundle
where it stands is what preserves the Input Monitoring and Accessibility grants, the login
item, and the hook paths in ~/.claude/settings.json. Downloading a fresh copy and
dragging it over the old one usually works and sometimes does not.
Turn the daily check off, or run one now, in Settings → Device → Version.
A build you compiled yourself cannot update itself — the feed's signature will not verify against a key it does not have — so the controls are hidden rather than offered and broken.
Next: What it does · Setting up · Troubleshooting