Using the Shelf
Open the island and switch to the Shelf. You will see the widgets as small cards in a row. Press a card’s header or empty area to expand it into its larger view, and fold it again when you are done.
- Swipe or scroll sideways to move along the row. A swipe never presses a button by accident: a drag that travels more than a few pixels is treated as a swipe, and the click that follows is ignored. Wheel and trackpad scrolling work too.
- Reorder by long press. Hold a card’s header or empty area and the card lifts; carry it to a new place and let go.
- Keyboard. Controls are ordinary buttons and fields, so Tab moves between them and Enter or Space presses the focused one.
- Turn widgets off or change their order in Settings → Shelf. A widget that is off never runs.
What the widgets keep (to-dos, notes, reminders, a running timer) is saved in %APPDATA%\Nook\shelf.json, on your PC.
To-do
A checklist and a free notes area. The small card shows the last few items with a box to tick each, and a field to add one. Expanded, you get the whole list (add, tick, remove) and a notes field. Items are kept a moment after the last change, so a restart does not lose them.
Timer
A countdown. The small card shows the time left with Start and Pause. Expanded, there is a dial, presets of 5, 15, 25 and 45 minutes, a time of your own (up to 599 minutes) and Reset. At zero it plays a sound and opens the island on the Timer. The end is stored as a wall-clock time, so the countdown stays right after the island was hidden or the PC slept, and a running timer survives a restart.
Reminders
Words and a time. The small card shows the next reminder and a quick add; expanded, you see the whole list, each line editable and removable. When one is due, Nook plays a sound and opens the island on the list.
Reminders fire only while Nook is running. There is no background service or scheduled task. A reminder that came due while Nook was closed is not fired late and loud: at the next start it is marked as missed, and one notice says so.
Media
Controls for whatever is playing in any player that tells Windows about it: Spotify, a browser, the Media Player. The small card shows the title, the artist and previous, play or pause, and next. Expanded, you also get the album art, the progress, the volume and the player’s name. Nook asks Windows for the media state about once a second, but only while a Media card is on screen. Album art is held in memory while it is shown and never written to disk. If it shows nothing, see troubleshooting.
Mirror
Your camera as a mirror, for a quick check before a call. The small card is just a Turn camera on button: there is no camera running until you press it.
- Only while it is open. The camera runs only while Mirror is expanded. It stops the moment Mirror closes, you leave the Shelf, the island folds or hides, or a card that asks you something takes over. It does not come back by itself.
- Nothing is recorded. No audio, no recording, nothing saved, no frame sent anywhere.
- Permission. Windows may ask for camera access. If you refused, allow it in Windows Settings → Privacy & security → Camera and let desktop apps use your camera, then try again.
Projects
The folders your Claude Code sessions have run in, most recent first (up to 30; folders that no longer exist are not shown). The small card lists the latest few, each with a button to open the folder in VS Code. Expanded, you see all of them, each with New Claude session, which opens Windows Terminal running claude in that folder. A folder is added when a session’s hook event names it, so the list fills up as you work.
Next: Cursor and Nook, or back to the guides.