The glass timeline
A photographic wallpaper that always reads. The picture sits behind your timeline because the timeline knows how to live on top of one.
The first thing you see when you open Lanai is the wallpaper. It is, intentionally, the first thing.
Behind every post sits a photograph — 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 isn’t the picture
The point is what the picture lets the rest of the interface do.
Here’s the design problem. A photograph behind a feed is usually a disaster: text loses contrast, accent colors clash with whatever’s underneath, and the design has to fight back with heavy panels and dark overlays. Most apps don’t try. The ones that do usually end up burying the picture under a wash so thick you might as well not have it.
Lanai’s timeline takes a different path. Each post sits inside a glass card that reads its own slice of the background and quietly adjusts how legible it needs to be. The accent on 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’re sitting on is photographic, lift slightly. You notice the picture. You don’t notice the work.
Glass Timeline
A view, in front of a view.
The signature reading surface. A wallpaper of your choosing sits behind everything; frosted-glass cards float in front, carrying the timeline you came for. Editorial typography survives the blur. The room around the words is part of the room.
Pick a wallpaper for the season you’re in. The reading stays the reading; the room around it changes.
A wallpaper carousel that knows the time
By default, the wallpaper changes with the day. Something warm 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 invitations. 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, with nothing required of you.
The glass timeline is the part of the app that makes everything else possible: it’s why the typography can be generous, why the accent colors can stay restrained, and why a long thread can be a pleasure to read instead of a chore.