Settings
Settings is in the Float menu on a Mac, and behind the gear in the toolbar on iPhone (on an iPhone Duo, folded or opened out on its side, the gear is near the bottom of the column down the right-hand edge, just above the plus, and Settings opens over the whole screen). On iPhone, every page but About has a line at the top saying what it is for.
The pages
| Page | What is on it |
|---|---|
| General | Light or dark, and live weather. On a Mac it also holds the menu bar icon, opening at login, and the quick capture shortcut. |
| Low Tide | The weekly review. See Low Tide. |
| Dates & Times | Which day starts your week, what Next week and This evening mean, and the default times for due dates and reminders. |
| Notifications | Whether the system lets Float notify you, separate switches for todo reminders and for Low Tide, and whether Float's own icon shows how many todos are in Today. |
| Data & Sync | iCloud sync, how it is doing, backups, exporting and restoring, and at the bottom the Trash: Show Trash and Empty Trash. |
| License | How many days are left in your free month, or that Float is unlocked, and, until it is, the one-time price with Buy and Restore. |
| About | What Float is: a drawing of its life-ring afloat, its tagline, which version you are running, who made it, links to the privacy policy and the terms of use, and the Apple Weather credit. On a Mac it is About Float in the Float menu rather than a settings page. |
Your purchase
Float is free for a month when you first install it. No card, nothing to sign up for, and nothing to cancel if you decide it is not for you.
The License page tells you where you stand: how many days are left in the free month, or that Float is unlocked. In the last week the list itself shows a card saying when the month ends, which you can wave away for the day. Tap or click that card and it opens this page.
After the free month, adding a new todo asks you to buy Float, once. Everything else keeps working: your list is still on your device and in your iCloud, you can complete, move and edit what is there, and you can export all of it at any time, bought or not, with the backups and Export as Markdown… described in Sync and backups. Buy it from that card or from the License page, and the capture field opens again. If the card came up because you tapped a draft you had set aside, buying opens that draft, ready to finish.
If you have already bought Float and you are setting up a new device, Restore Purchase on that page brings it across.
Which settings follow you
- Dates & Times and Low Tide follow you to your other devices when iCloud sync is on. Those are decisions about your list, and a different week start on the phone would make the same list mean two things.
- General stays on the device you set it on. Dark on the Mac and light on the phone is a reasonable thing to want.
- Notifications are per-device, and on iPhone the line at the top of the page says so. Your Low Tide schedule follows you (that is one decision about your list), but which device buzzes about it is a separate question, answered on each. The count on the icon is the same kind of answer: the Dock on the Mac you work at and a bare icon on the phone in your pocket is a setup, not a disagreement.
- Everything else is about the device it is on (the menu bar icon, the quick capture shortcut, the backup folder) and stays there.
Two settings worth knowing about
Sync across my devices with iCloud takes effect at the next launch, not immediately. See Sync and backups for why.
Show Today's count on the app icon (on the Dock icon on a Mac) starts on, and the introduction offers it along with notifications. The number counts everything Today holds: what you floated, what is due today, anything overdue, and any draft you set aside. It goes down as you tick things off, and away entirely when Today is clear. On an iPhone it moves on at midnight too, when a todo becomes due, even if you have not opened Float since the evening. A draft counts because it is something you typed and have not dealt with yet; filing it or throwing it away both take it off the icon.
On a Mac it works whether or not you let Float send notifications: the count on the Dock is not a notification. On an iPhone it is, in the sense that the system treats badges as part of the same permission, and inside that permission badges are a separate switch from banners. If the count does not appear on an iPhone, the Notifications page says why, and where it says it tells you which thing is in the way. When notifications themselves are off — or Float has not asked you yet — the note at the top of the page is the one to read. When notifications are allowed and it is badges alone that are blocked, the note sits under the switch: sometimes that is a switch to turn back on in Settings, and sometimes it is that Float was allowed to notify you before it could ask about badges, which iOS only asks once.