UI Layout

Small real estate, big impact. Chrome announced vertical tabs in the year of our Lord 2026. It’s time for something better.

Kaba keeps the screen for your content. There is one slim bar at the top, the Kaba bar, and below it one or more panes tiled inside the current frame. The address bar, the frame list and the menus are overlays that appear when summoned and then go away.

[todo: add screenshot of the full Kaba window and of parts Kaba bar, frame strip, a frame with two tiled panes, pane status bar.]

Frames Menu

Frames are a window. Panes are smaller windows within a Frame. Kind of like how some windows are grids, or divided windows. For those that are used to the terminal, this is home. Welcome.

For the rest, this all will feel second nature very soon, just get in and drive.

The Frames Menu is in the top right of your default Kaba layout between your Avatar and your Downloads. In the Frames Menu you can:

Item	Does
Add new Pane	Opens a new pane in the current frame, on the desktop.
Add new Frame	Opens a new frame. Same as Ctrl/Cmd+T.
Save current Frame	Keeps this layout and its pages under a name. Saved frames live in Hippocampus and on the desktop.
Rebalance current Frame	Evens out the panes.
View all Frames	Opens your saved frames. Same as /frame in the omnibar.

The badge on the icon is the number of open frames.

[todo: add screenshot of the Frames Menu and of parts the icon with its count, Add new Pane, Add new Frame, Save current Frame, Rebalance current Frame, View all Frames.]

Omnibar icon menu

The omnibar icon opens the omnibar: address bar, search and command palette in one. The same thing happens with Ctrl+Space or Ctrl/Cmd+L. It slides in from the top, does what you asked, and gives the space back.

[todo: add screenshot of the omnibar icon and of parts the icon in the Kaba bar, the omnibar open beneath it.]

Avatar

Your avatar sits in the top right corner. It is your account’s picture, which you can change in Settings, and it is the button that opens the Kaba menu. See accounts.

Kaba menu

Click your avatar to open it.

Item	Opens	Omnibar
Projects	Kaba Projects	/projects
Terminal	Terminal	/term
File Manager	File explorer	/files
Saves	Your saved frames	/frame
Discovery	Discovery	/discover
HippoCampus	Hippocampus	/mem
Downloads	Your downloads	/downloads
Toolbench	Toolbench, when AI is enabled	/toolbench
Disable / Enable Blocker	The global ad-blocker switch
Sites	Settings → Sites
Settings	Settings	/settings
Exit Kaba	Quit, after confirming

When an update has been downloaded, Restart to update Kaba appears at the top.

Right-click an empty part of the Kaba bar for window actions: reload the Kaba shell, clear the app cache, unload the system model, lock Kaba, toggle fullscreen or minimal mode, minimize, and quit.

[todo: add screenshot of the Kaba menu and of parts each menu item with its omnibar shortcut, the Restart to update item.]

Performance

The Kaba bar shows live network upload and download, CPU usage and memory usage, with a small chart. Change how often it samples, or turn it off, under Settings → System monitor refresh interval. See Kaba bar.

Frames

Frames are Kaba’s take on tabs. A frame is a workspace: it holds one or more panes arranged the way you left them. Switching frames switches the whole arrangement.

Action	How
New frame	Ctrl/Cmd+T
Switch to frame 1 to 8	Ctrl/Cmd+1 … Ctrl/Cmd+8
Last frame	Ctrl/Cmd+9
Next / previous frame	Ctrl/Cmd+Right / Ctrl/Cmd+Left
See which frames are open	Ctrl/Cmd+`
Close the window	Super+Shift+Q (Linux), Cmd+Shift+Q (macOS), Ctrl+Shift+Q (Windows)

Ctrl/Cmd+` shows which frames are available. Navigate them with the left and right arrow keys, and close one by clicking its x.

The frame strip in the Kaba bar has a thumbnail for each open frame. Click to switch, drag to reorder, right-click for the frame menu. A thumbnail shows small marks when Kaba is driving a pane in it, when a pane is frozen to save memory, or when a pane is muted.

[todo: add screenshot of the frames view and of parts frame thumbnails, the active frame, the close x, arrow-key navigation.]

Frame menu

Right-click a frame in the strip:

• Layout Mode: Tiling or Tabbed. See tiling windows.
• Mute Frame
• Freeze All Panes / Wake All Panes: release or restore the frame’s memory. See Memory Saver.
• Save Frame
• Close Frame, Close Other Frames, Close Frames to the Right

Frame groups

Group related frames under a coloured, named chip.

Action	How
Group with the previous frame	Ctrl/Cmd+G, or the frame menu
New group with this frame	Frame menu
Add to an existing group	Frame menu → Add to group
Remove from group	Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+G

Right-click a group chip to rename it (F2), change its colour, add a frame, freeze or wake the whole group, ask Kaba about it, ungroup, or close every frame in it. A group can be saved and reopened later from Hippocampus.

Two settings under Look & Feel control how groups behave: One frame group open at a time collapses the others when you open one, and Fold a group back down after collapses a group to its chip once you stop interacting with it.

[todo: add screenshot of frame groups in the strip and of parts a group chip with colour, an expanded group, a collapsed group, the group context menu.]

Panes

A pane is one page, terminal or app inside a frame. Every pane has a thin status bar with back, forward, reload or stop, developer tools, a move handle and close, plus badges when the pane is in Ghost Mode, on Tor, or frozen. The focused pane is marked by the chartreuse bar along its bottom edge.

Right-click inside a pane for its menu: navigation, split, move, fullscreen, Open Terminal, Open My Hippocampus, Add this Memory, Discard Pane Now, Ghost Mode, Tor and per-pane ad blocking.

How panes are arranged is covered in tiling windows.

[todo: add screenshot of a pane and of parts status bar buttons, the focus bar, Ghost Mode badge, Tor badge, the pane context menu.]

Surfaces that appear on demand

Surface	Open with	Notes
Omnibar	Ctrl+Space, Ctrl/Cmd+L	Slides in from the top.
Frames view	Ctrl/Cmd+`
Find in page	Ctrl/Cmd+F	Ctrl/Cmd+G and Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+G for next and previous.
Downloads	Kaba bar	Pause, resume, cancel, Show in Files, Show in System.
Toasts	automatic	Short answers and notices, including replies to context-menu AI actions.
Permission prompts	automatic	Allow or Block when a site asks for a capability.

Compact layouts

• i3 mode (Settings → Look & Feel) replaces frame thumbnails with numbered workspace chips for a minimal, keyboard-first bar.
• i3-style compact header (Settings) shrinks the bar to about 24 px with workspace squares for frames 1 to 9. Reach the address bar through the omnibar.
• Focus mode (Toggle Minimal Mode) removes the Kaba bar: Ctrl+Cmd+\ on Linux and macOS, Ctrl+Shift+\ on Windows. This happens automatically in full screen.
• Fullscreen: F11, or Ctrl+Cmd+F on macOS.

[todo: add screenshot of i3 mode and of parts numbered workspace chips, group underline, compact header.]