The interface

Minimal, streamlined, and out of your way.

No desktop to bury things on, no folders to lose work in, no menu bar, no dock, and nothing to install. Three thin rows at the top of the screen and the page underneath them.

Nothing can be installed, so nothing accumulates and nothing makes it slow. There is nothing to break and nothing to tidy up, which is as useful on a machine somebody works on as it is on a child's first computer.

Everything below is real and you can use it. Type an address, open a tab, change the FamilySafe level and see what it refuses.

The interface

This is the whole interface.

No menu bar. No task bar. No dock. Nothing along the bottom of the screen and nothing down the side unless you ask for it. Two slim rows at the top, and everything underneath them is what you actually came to look at.

The Bolt Interface on an ordinary website A full screen page. Across the top, one row with a home button, back and forward arrows, an address field, refresh, site permissions, buttons to save the page to favorites or bookmarks, the page's FamilySafe rating, the current workspace, and a sidebar toggle. Below it a row of small tools for capturing, zooming, editing and finding. Below that a row of tabs. Everything under those three rows is the page itself. There is no menu bar, no task bar and no dock. example.com/a-page-you-were-reading K-T Personal A page you were reading Ledger Mail
Three thin rows of interface, and the rest of the screen is the page.

Back, forward, address, refresh

The four controls anyone already knows, in the order they have been in for thirty years. Nothing here needs explaining to anybody.

Save it, in two places

A star and a bookmark sit next to refresh. Favorites and bookmarks are both kept per workspace.

The page's FamilySafe rating

A readout, not a control. It shows the rating of the page you are on, or the part of its range this machine is entitled to, so a K-T page reads K on a machine built at K.

The workspace you are in

Personal, Business, Private, or one you made. Each keeps its own sign-ins, tabs, history and notifications. Switching asks for your password.

The sidebar button

Far right, and the only thing on screen that opens anything. Press it again and the screen is entirely the page.

The tool row

The second row. Capture, zoom, edit, save, find and save as PDF, as icons with their names on hover. It applies to whichever tab is in front, so it never has to be found in a menu.

Tabs, and nothing under them

The third row. Everything you have open is here, each carrying the color of the site it belongs to, and dragging one moves it.

Optimized for Bolt

Sites built to work well on a Bolt show the Bolt symbol next to the address, and the address field turns yellow. It means the people who made that site have done the work: it behaves properly at the resolution you are running, it handles being open alongside a dozen other tabs, and it does not assume things about your machine that are not true here. A site without the symbol still works. It just has not been checked.

My Files, Settings, Lock, Sign out

At the foot of the sidebar, with the battery and the time below them. My Files opens a file browser organized by workspace; Lock wants your Quick PIN back, and Sign out wants your password.

Nothing else

No menu bar, no task bar, no dock, no system tray, no notification center stacked over your work. Three thin rows at the top. On a 13 inch screen that is most of an inch of page you would not otherwise have.

Renderings of software still in development. The finished interface may differ.

Try it

Try it.

This demonstration shows how the interface works, not how it will look. Open tabs, type an address, dig through the sidebar, switch workspaces, change the FamilySafe level and watch what it refuses. Every control behaves the way it will on a Bolt.

This is a rough working model, not the finished product. It is here to show how the interface behaves. The real one will be visually refined, and it will open the sites you already use rather than the invented ones in here.

Machine FamilySafe level

Set once at the factory. Here so you can try it.

Trust light

Over the machine
Lit when the cursor is over Bolt, dark over a page. Look before you click.
Simply press Esc when you are done to exit the demo.

Two things this demonstration is not. It is not the finished look: the real interface will be considerably more refined than the rough version here. And it does not browse the real web, because a page in a demonstration cannot load somebody else's site. On a Bolt it opens the sites you already use, the same ones you open today. The handful of sites inside this demonstration are invented, and they are here to give the controls something to act on.

Your files

Your files stay where they already are.

Bolt does not ask you to move your documents anywhere. Whatever you use today works the same way it does now, because it is reached the same way it is reached now.

  • Google Drive Docs, Sheets and Slides included
  • Microsoft OneDrive With Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the web
  • Dropbox
  • Apple iCloud Drive Through iCloud on the web
  • Box
  • Proton Drive
  • pCloud
  • Sync.com
  • Amazon Photos
  • Your company's own If it opens in a browser, it opens on a Bolt

Anything that runs in a browser today runs on a Bolt. There is no Bolt-only storage service you have to adopt, and nothing to migrate if you ever stop using one. Bolt Cloud Storage exists if you want it, and it is one more option rather than the only one.

Workspaces and accounts

Two different things, and the difference matters.

A workspace lives inside one sign-in. You might keep Personal, a side business, and Private, each with its own tabs, sign-ins, favorites, bookmarks, history and notifications. Nothing crosses between them on its own, so two accounts on the same service stay open at the same time without signing either one out. Switching between them asks for your password.

Files can be copied between your own workspaces. They are all yours, and the wall between them is there to keep things tidy and private from a glance over your shoulder, not to keep you out of your own work.

An account is a different person, or a different organization. Your employer's seat is not a workspace inside your account: it is its own sign-in. To use it you sign out of yours completely and sign in to theirs. Nothing carries across, and files cannot be copied between accounts in either direction.

That line is deliberate and it runs both ways. Your employer cannot see anything in your personal account, and nothing from your personal workspaces can be moved into theirs. On a shared machine at home the same rule applies to each person who signs in.

Coming soon

Stay informed.

Bolt is in development. Leave an address and we will tell you when there is something real to see.

We will not sell your address or pass it to anybody, and will not send you anything except news about Bolt.