How to use Everyway Panel

0Setup: do I have Python?

Only matters for the source version. The portable versions include their own Python, so if you're using one of those you can skip this section entirely.

Checking by hand

Open a terminal (Windows key, type cmd, Enter) and run:

python --version

• Python 3.10 or higher — you're good.
• Python 3.9 or lower — too old.
• "not recognized", or it opens the Microsoft Store — Python is either not installed, or installed but not on PATH. Try py --version instead. If that works, the app still launches (its launcher tries py too).

You also need tkinter, the graphics part. Check with python -c "import tkinter" — nothing printed means it's there.

No Python — installing it (no admin needed)

1. Get Python 3.10 or newer from python.org/downloads.
2. On the first installer screen, tick "Add python.exe to PATH".
3. Click Install Now — it installs just for you, no admin rights.
4. Leave "tcl/tk and IDLE" ticked so tkinter is included.
5. Re-run Check Python.bat, then start Everyway Panel.

tkinter missing

tkinter is not a pip package and pip cannot add it — it ships with Python, but only when the right option was ticked. Re-run the python.org installer, choose Modify, tick tcl/tk and IDLE, finish. No admin needed. (Or use a portable version, which already includes it.)

1Opening, closing & basics

2The tile types

There are six kinds of tile. You pick the type at the top of the tile builder.

The grid

Tiles sit on a grid of cells. A "normal" tile is 2×2 cells; the smallest "mini" tile is 1×1. Width and Height in the builder are in these cells. Long labels auto-shrink to fit, and on a very small tile they hide and show as a hover tooltip instead. Each Action and Toggle tile can also be set to show Icon + Title, Icon only, or Title only.

3Adding, editing & arranging tiles

Tiles are managed in Edit Layout — open it from the grid icon in the top-right, the Edit Layout button at the bottom, or Manage > Edit Layout.

Your layout is saved automatically to config.json.

4Appearance & behaviour

All on the Manage screen.

Appearance

Behaviour

5Panels — saving, switching & sharing (kits)

A panel is a whole layout you can save and come back to: your tiles, their sizes and order, the theme and the column count. Keep several — a Work panel, a Finance panel — and switch between them. A kit is the same thing packaged for someone else. Same file either way. Everything lives in Manage > Panels.

Your panel already has a name

The first time the app runs it names the panel you're looking at "My panel" and saves it, so the list is never empty and switching always has somewhere to come back to. Rename it any time with Save as.

Update vs Save as

Save as: who is it for?

What to include when sharing

The only difference between the first two is the look. Send "the whole panel" when the colours are part of the point; send "just the tiles" when you're sharing an arrangement and they should keep their own colours. Anything your tiles need is always included, so you can't accidentally send a kit that arrives broken.

Switching panels

Manage > Panels > Load beside the one you want, or put a "Switch to another panel" Action tile on your panel for one-click switching. Every switch:

• Saves the panel you're leaving back to its own file, so Work → Experiment → Work returns exactly what you left.
• Writes an autosave first.
• Stops anything running on the panel you're leaving, after asking — it names what's running. A background task with no tile to show it would be invisible, and this app does not do invisible work.
• Brings the new panel's toggles in switched off. Loading a panel never starts a background job for you.

Autosaves

Written only in the moment before something replaces your panel — never on a timer. The last 10 are kept. They sit in kits/autosave/ and are deliberately kept out of the panel list so your switcher stays short. To use one, copy the .spkit file from kits/autosave/ into kits/ and it appears in the panel list like any other.

Loading a kit someone sent you

Manage > Panels > Load from file… and pick the .spkit. You get a preview before anything is written: what's inside, who made it, and whether it carries any programs. Then choose:

Widgets, themes and icons install either way — they're additive. If a kit has the same name as a panel you already have, "Save as a new panel" asks first: replace, keep both (the new one gets a " (2)" suffix), or cancel. A kit named like the panel you're on is always kept as a separate copy, so importing can never wipe what's on your screen.

If the kit was designed for a different number of columns, the preview says so. Changing columns rearranges tiles but loses nothing — you can switch back any time.

6Installed items — where your files live

Manage > Installed shows a summary, and "Installed items (where files live)" opens the full list: every mini-app, script, theme and icon the app can use.

• Grouped by type, each tagged shipped (came with the app), added (you or a kit put it there), or missing.
• Click a row for its full path, size, and which tiles use it. "Show file" opens the folder.
• Icons are collapsed to a count — only ones you or a kit added are listed.

Missing items

If a tile points at something not installed — a mini-app you removed, an icon a kit forgot — it appears in a Missing group at the top. The tile keeps working as far as it can; it just can't show that piece.

Removing something

Click a row > Remove. Before it does anything it tells you how many tiles use it.

The archive folder

Removed files are moved into bin/ rather than erased, so nothing is destroyed behind your back. Nothing in the app reads them again. If that folder grows past about 100 MB, Manage says so — it's safe to empty by hand at any time.

7What's built in

Mini-apps

The on-screen keyboard in detail

• Shift / Ctrl / Alt latch: click once to hold the key down, click again to let go. Because they're really held, you can use the mouse with them — Shift+drag, Ctrl+click to multi-select, Ctrl+scroll to zoom — and ordinary shortcuts like Ctrl+C work by clicking Ctrl then C.
• Shift lights up and the number row shows its symbols (1 becomes !) while held.
• Caps Lock is a normal on/off lock (letters only, not digits) and lights up in its own colour.
• Hold a key with the mouse button down and it repeats, like a real keyboard. Tune or disable that with the "Hold-repeat delay" setting (0 = off).
• A held modifier is always released when the tile is rebuilt or the app closes, so a key can never get stuck down.

Reading the day range (Stocks and Watchlist)

The little range bar shows where the price sits between the low and the high, but which day it belongs to changes through the trading day:

• A solid bar = today's session; the range grows as the day goes on.
• A dashed bar = the last completed session. Before the market opens there's no "today" yet, so it shows yesterday's range — exactly what you want then, because it tells you whether the price has gapped away from where it finished. On Stocks this is spelled out in words: "rng" = today, "prev" = the last completed session.
• If the price has moved outside that range, the bar shows a small arrow at the end it passed, and the numbers switch to the gap — e.g. "▲5.1% >213.60" means 5.1% above a high of 213.60.

Hover any row (or the range line on a Stocks tile) for the full story: exact prices, which session the range is from and its date, and how far above or below it the price now is.

Example scripts

In scripts/ — wire them to Action, Toggle or Live Info tiles.

The default layout already shows several of these so you can see them work.

8Make your own — scripts & widgets

You can extend the app with small Python files. There are four things you can write, each with a ready-to-copy template in the scripts/ folder.

Full instructions ship with the app

Getting an AI to write it

You don't need to code. Describe what you want, let an AI write the file, then drop it in the right folder and pick it in the builder. Copy one of the prompts below, fill in the [brackets], and attach the matching template.

Action script — a click that does something

Write an Everyway Panel ACTION script. It runs once inside the app when I click
a button and then returns. It can use ctx.get_clipboard(),
ctx.set_clipboard(text), ctx.send_keys('ctrl+c') and ctx.paste(). It must
NOT loop. I want it to: [describe, e.g. 'take my selected text and remove
all line breaks, then paste it back']. Give each function a one-line
docstring. Match scripts/action_template.py.

Toggle job — something that runs until I switch it off

Write an Everyway Panel TOGGLE script. Its run(ctx) is launched as its own
background process and must keep running (a loop) until stopped; it can't
use the clipboard. I want it to: [describe, e.g. 'every 30 minutes back up
folder A to folder B; I want to pause/resume it']. Match
scripts/toggle_template.py.

Live Info / Monitor provider

Write an Everyway Panel DATA PANEL provider. The app calls the function on a
timer and it must RETURN a dict with 'status' and 'blocks' (block types:
big, badge, kv, table, progress, lines, list). Keep it quick/non-blocking.
I want it to show: [describe, e.g. 'the number of unread files in folder X
as a big number']. Match scripts/provider_template.py.

Mini-app (Widget) tile

Write an Everyway Panel custom WIDGET: a single .py with build(parent, ctx) and
a META dict, returning one CustomTkinter frame. I want: [describe, e.g. 'a
unit converter']. Follow scripts/widgets/HOW_TO_WRITE_WIDGETS.txt and the
built-in calculator.py.

9Icons

Icons are Lucide .svg files in the icons/ folder. To use one, type its name (without .svg) in a tile's icon picker.

The app auto-recolours every icon to match the theme.

11Files & folders