# Tangent

This version of Tangent, Tangent as a computer, is an experiment in unifying apps with shared windowing and storage. It takes multiple apps, lets each access shared storage (like themes and passwords), and combines them in one page with GNOME-like windowing.

Tangent takes inspiration from GNOME, but it also takes inspiration from some of my most privacy-conscious friends and the words of Steve Jobs. It connects directly to platforms like StudentVue without sending your password through a backend, unlike previous versions. It's still designed to help with productivity and efficiency, summed up in the slogan "if the computer is a bicycle for the mind, Tangent is a computer for school".

I wrote the blog [Tangent is dead; long live Tangent](https://ktibow.github.io/blog/tangentcomputer/) when I first started developing Tangent as a computer. Visions and goals change over time, and achieving parity with previous versions of Tangent isn't one by now. But there are still some genuinely useful, accelerating apps, like School, Web, Chat, and everything in Settings that made it to the dock:
<img width="684" height="190" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/76b021d8-4d67-47af-a9d1-f0217ac0a558" />

And it's still as similar to GNOME as I wanted it to be. You can control+click on apps to open multiple windows, and the windowing system will allow you to view them at once:
<img width="2319" height="1312" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/51a791db-ac7f-4b5a-b7c4-1aba4ad95292" />

Some parts had to be different - for example, there's no title bar, and instead of using Super you use Alt - but it's rather similar.

Something that I don't find interesting any more but most people probably would is that Tangent uses Material 3. This means that you can pick any color...
<img width="1080" height="732" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4a60b026-2458-4b26-93e0-fc3c3f0c3cd5" />
and the whole OS will adapt!
<img width="1365" height="470" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/64fc248a-e133-4996-810b-6cb586d8260f" />

Material 3's color system is very useful, but I also use some Material 3 components. This makes it a weird hybrid between GNOME and Android, made even weirder by the fact that both use Linux but Tangent doesn't. It works though - GNOMElike windowing and Materiallike theming+components go well together.

Hope you'll [try it](https://tangent.val.run).