Getting started

The orb and the tray

XTop runs in the background, like any tray app. There are three ways to reach it:

The floating orb — click to open the panel, drag to move it.

• The orb — a small always-on-top mark over every window and every virtual desktop. Click it to open the panel, drag it to move it. Its position is saved, and it is pulled back on-screen if you unplug the monitor it was on.
• The tray icon — left-click opens the panel. Right-click gives you: Open panel, Notes, API tester, Athkar (only when Islamic mode is on), Show floating button, Start with Windows, and Quit XTop.
• Ctrl+Shift+Space — toggles the panel from anywhere.

Windows decides whether the tray icon sits on the taskbar or in the hidden-icons overflow. Drag it in or out of the ^ area, or set it under Settings → Personalization → Taskbar → Other system tray icons.

Don't want the orb at all? Turn off Show floating button and drive everything from the tray icon and the keyboard shortcut.

The orb's launchers

At rest, as above, the orb is a small compact X with its blades pulled in — half transparent, nothing to read.

Put your pointer on it and it opens. The four blades extend, each revealing the service it launches, and a ball rises in the middle.

Open: each blade carries its own icon, and the ball in the middle opens the panel.

Blade	Opens	Shortcut
Top left	Notes — the global notebook	Ctrl+Shift+7
Top right	API tester — on a fresh scratch tab	Ctrl+Shift+9
Bottom left	Meetings — the window, without recording	Ctrl+Shift+1
Bottom right	New recording — starts recording straight away	Ctrl+Shift+3

The four keys sit in the same corners the blades do, so the shortcut layout is the same picture as the orb — see the four corners.

Each blade names itself on hover, so you never have to guess which icon is which. They use the same icons as the panel's header, so the two surfaces agree on what each thing looks like.

Only the icon is a button. The blades are long and they cross, so treating a whole blade as a launcher would leave almost nowhere to press for the panel — anywhere off an icon still opens the panel.

The ball in the middle is the panel. Since the four blades meet there and look like four launchers, the centre needs to say plainly that it is the one thing that is not one, so it sits slightly proud of the blades rather than hiding inside the crossing.

Move away and the blades pull back in.

While a meeting is recording

Recording: the record arm has become a Stop button.

The record arm answers to what is actually happening. While a meeting is being recorded its icon becomes Stop, its tooltip changes to match, and clicking it stops the recording rather than starting a second one — the arm never advertises an action it will not perform.

The state survives hiding and restoring the orb mid-meeting: the orb asks whether a recording is running rather than assuming it is not.

Ctrl+Shift+3 behaves the same way — one key starts a recording and stops it, so you never have to find the window to finish.

One mark, everywhere

The orb's shape and the icon on your taskbar are generated from the same source, so the thing you click and the thing in the tray can never drift apart.

Closing is not quitting

Closing the panel leaves the app running. Use Quit XTop in the tray menu to actually stop it.

The panel

The panel opens with the search box focused.

The header, left to right: search, the list/card view toggle, notes, meetings, API tester, Islamic mode, reminders, the pin, and settings.

The body shows your last opened project, a short Recently opened list, and then your collections. The footer adds a collection, adds a project, or imports a whole folder.

The panel hides when it loses focus, unless you pin it.

Your first collection

1. Open the panel and click Collection in the footer. Name it — Work, Side projects, whatever fits.
2. Click Project to add one by hand, or Import folder to point at a folder and let XTop scan it: every subfolder holding a .git directory or a package manifest is offered, and you tick the ones you want.
3. For each project, set its environment — Windows or WSL. That is what decides whether "open a terminal" means PowerShell or wsl.exe -d Ubuntu --cd <path>.

Then type in the search box and press Enter. That is the loop the whole app is built around.

Two languages

English by default. Switch to Arabic in Settings → Language and every window re-renders in Arabic and flips to RTL immediately. The choice is stored, so all windows agree — including ones already open.

Where to go next

• Panel & projects — search, aliases, collections, the row actions.
• Keyboard shortcuts — the whole list.
• Settings — every option, explained.