Keyboard first, and thumb first

This round of the app was about saving seconds on things done every day. There was one rule throughout: every gesture and shortcut is a faster way to do something a button already does. Nothing is reachable only by swiping or only by a key.

The palette

Ctrl or ⌘ K (or /) opens a palette. It lists:

• every screen
• actions like logging a session or opening the trash
• your habits still open today, so typing “wat” and Enter ticks Water
• with two or more letters, results from searching everything you’ve logged

It follows the WAI-ARIA combobox pattern: the input owns a listbox, aria-activedescendant tracks the highlighted option, and arrow keys, Enter and Escape work as a screen reader expects. Matching is word-start: “write jour” finds “Write in the journal”.

G then a letter jumps to a screen: H for habits, F for food, J for journal, and so on. ? lists them all. Shortcuts are ignored while you’re typing in a field or a sheet is open.

Swipe and long-press

Swipe a habit right to complete it, or left (or long-press) to set the exact amount. The gesture only starts once movement is clearly sideways (one and a half times more horizontal than vertical), so scrolling a list never ticks anything, and vertical scroll stays native with touch-action: pan-y. A coloured strip shows what the swipe will do before you let go.

Habits being broken get no gestures at all. Logging a slip should never be one stray thumb movement.

Pull to refresh, only where it belongs

In a browser tab, the browser already has pull-to-refresh, and two would fight. So PaceStreak’s runs only in the installed app. It syncs this device’s changes first, then refetches what’s on screen without reloading, so a half-written note survives.

Remembered, per device

Text size, a compact layout (one CSS variable, Tailwind’s --spacing, tightens every gap at once) and high contrast are per device, because a phone and a laptop want different things. Screens also remember their last tab, ignoring a stored value that no longer exists.