The Glass Timeline
A photographic background layer with locally-aware contrast safety, so the reading surface always stays legible no matter what the wallpaper is doing.
The first thing you see when you open Lanai is the wallpaper. It is, intentionally, the first thing.
Behind every post sits a photographic background — chosen by you or rotated through a curated carousel — that softens the rectangle of your screen into something more like a window. Late-afternoon light on water. The lit edge of a porch ceiling. Snow without a sky behind it. The wallpaper is the room; the timeline is the conversation inside it.
The point is not the picture
The point is what the picture lets the rest of the interface do.
A photograph behind a feed is usually a problem: text loses contrast, accent colors clash, and the design has to fight back with heavy panels and dark overlays. Lanai’s timeline doesn’t do that. Each post sits inside a glass card that reads its background and quietly adjusts how legible it needs to be. The accent of a button can be told the wall behind you is dim — be a little brighter. The body of a post can be told the area you are sitting on is photographic, lift slightly. The result, from the reader’s chair, is that text stays comfortable whether the wallpaper is a soft cream or a midnight sky. You notice the picture. You don’t notice the work.
A wallpaper carousel that knows the time
By default, the wallpaper changes with the day. A warm scene in the morning, something quieter in the late evening. The carousel is curated, opt-in to rotate, and pinnable to a single image you love. You can also bring your own — the photo you took at the lake last summer, the screenshot of your favorite painting, the gradient you generated for your wedding invitation. Lanai’s job is to make sure whatever sits behind your reading still works as a reading surface.
What it gives you
Five themes — Day, Dusk, Miami, Late Night, and a High Contrast theme designed at equal polish — coexist with the wallpaper layer. The contrast safety system means a wallpaper picked at random in Day still reads cleanly when the theme switches to Dusk after sunset, without you doing anything.
The Glass Timeline is the part of the app that makes everything else possible: it is why the typography can be generous, why the accent colors can be restrained, and why a long thread can be enjoyable to read.