Principles
Seven rules, and the number each request would break.
A Minimal app is a window onto one kind of content. These rules keep it that way. Every app is checked against all seven before release, and a feature that breaks one doesn't ship, however useful it sounds.
- 01
Zero chrome
No caption, toolbar, menu bar, status bar, sidebar or scrollbars. The edge of the window is the edge of the content. The one written exception: in an app whose content is several pages at once, like Minimal AI, a single thin row of tabs is allowed, because switching between them is the content.
- 02
Native frame only
Windows 11 draws the one-pixel border, the rounded corners and the shadow. The app draws nothing of its own around the content, so it snaps, stacks, resizes and animates exactly like every other window on your desktop.
- 03
Every action is a gesture or a key
Zoom, scroll, page, open, move, maximize and close all work from the mouse or the keyboard, using the shortcuts you already know from other apps. There's no button to find, because there are no buttons.
- 04
Feedback is transient
When something changes, a small badge says so, page 12 of 40, 150 %, and a hairline mark shows where you are. Both fade about a second after you stop. Nothing stays on screen that isn't the content.
- 05
No configuration
There's no settings screen, preferences file or registry key. Defaults are chosen once, carefully, for everyone. If a choice would need a setting, the app makes the choice or leaves the feature out.
- 06
No dependencies, no network of its own
The engine already inside Windows does the work: its PDF renderer, image codecs, media pipeline and OCR. The app ships no third-party libraries and contains no networking code. It has no updater, no telemetry and no crash reporter. An app that shows a website loads that website and nothing else.
- 07
Crisp by construction
Content is drawn at the exact device-pixel size it fills, at the monitor's real scale factor, and drawn again whenever that changes. Text is never an enlarged bitmap.
Feature requests
Does it add anything to the window?
Every proposal is asked that question first. If the answer is yes, a toolbar button, a panel, a setting, the request is answered with the number of the rule it breaks, and closed kindly. If the answer is no, a better gesture, a faster open, a sharper render, it goes on the list.
We track one signal above the others: how often people ask for a button, compared with how often they ask for a gesture to work better. When the first starts to win, the rules are doing their job and we explain them better. We don't bend them.
What will never be added.
A short list, so nobody has to ask.
Toolbars, menus, sidebars or tabs
A settings screen or preferences file
Accounts, ads, telemetry, crash reports or update pings
An AI panel
Other apps
We like the tools people already use.
SumatraPDF is small, fast and honest, and it has been for twenty years. Acrobat does things no minimal app should try. Minimal Software is for people who want less, and when you need more we'll point you to the tool that does it well. You won't find a comparison chart here that makes another app look bad.