Editing by hand (the tool menus)

Some changes are easier to make than to describe. Every artifact editor puts its hands-on tools on one bar across the top of the screen: add something new, crop the frame, doodle on top, rearrange tracks — and whatever you select brings its own settings, looks and filters along the bottom. What you do is exactly what you get — no prompt, no waiting, and nothing to switch into first.

Where the tools are

Open any artifact to enter its editor. The bar across the top holds everything:

• On the left, Smart Edit (the MotherFluxer logo) leads, then the tool menus for that artifact, and File is always the last of them. The one exception is the App of a post you made, opened from the post: what it holds was posted and never changes, so it shows neither Smart Edit nor File. Click one to open it; click it again — or click anywhere outside it — to close it. The menu drops down over your work rather than pushing it around, so what you're editing stays where it was. An App's tabs are the one exception: an open App tab fits its containers into the space under the menu, and your App moves out of their way. On a screen too narrow for every menu, the menus scroll sideways under a soft fade while Smart Edit and everything on the right stay where they are.
• On the right, the same actions on every artifact: zoom, undo and redo, and close.
• Along the bottom, the settings for whatever you have selected — click a thing on the canvas and its controls appear there.

The split is the same in every editor but the App's: the top bar adds things and holds what belongs to the artifact as a whole, and the bottom bar edits the thing you have selected. Adding something closes its menu and hands the new thing back selected, so its controls are already open along the bottom. Make your change directly on the canvas or in the open pane — it applies instantly. When a menu's search doesn't hold what you're after, Ask AI (the MotherFluxer mark in that search), pressed with nothing typed, closes the menu and opens Smart Edit on Discuss about what you were looking for.

The tools depend on the artifact type

Each artifact gets menus built for it, so the set changes from one type to the next:

• Image — Add, Canvas and Layers.
• Video — Add and Canvas.
• Audio — Add and Meter. The whole mix is the Master row pinned under the track list; click its picture to edit the mix along the bottom, the same way a track opens.
• Document — Style, View, Add and Layers.
• 3D — Scene, with Material, Animate and Distort along the bottom; pressing any of those selects the model.
• App — Develop, Manage and Equip.

On Images and Videos the top bar only ADDS things and holds settings for the whole artifact. Every look and every effect is a setting on the thing it treats, so it lives on that item's own menus along the bottom once you select it.

An App works a little differently. Each of its three tabs opens a row of containers — Develop holds About, Format, Data and Code, for example, and Manage has a second row — and the container you pick fills the space under the menu instead of dropping over your App. Settings open in a window from each thing's Settings icon, and there is no bar along the bottom. While changes are waiting to be published, or your Draft or live App has a problem, the Manage tab carries a mark.

For the full toolset and step-by-step instructions for a specific type, see that artifact's own page.

The device an editor needs

The Image, Video, Document and Audio editors draw your work on your device's graphics processor, so they open in any browser that offers WebGPU — a current Chrome, Edge or Safari, on a computer or phone; the 3D editor needs WebGL. Where an editor can't run, opening the artifact shows This artifact can't be opened on this device. in place of the editor, with a quieter line beneath it saying why: Update your browser to edit this artifact. when the browser offers no WebGPU at all, or Editing needs a device with a supported graphics processor (GPU). when it does but this device's graphics can't run the editor. If the graphics give out partway through a session and can't be restarted, the same lines appear over the editor. The artifact's card still shows everywhere, and a video still plays.

An item's menus along the bottom

Select an item and its own menus open along the bottom: its first tab, named for what it is, then Effects, on a video Animate, then Border and, last, Transform. Effects, Animate and Border share one layout: one continuous strip of cards you scroll sideways through, grouped into sections — each section opens with an outlined card carrying its name, and the search column at the start of the strip opens to All, Starred and Community where the strip has them, with expand arrows that add a box to type a name into. While the item carries nothing on that track there is nothing else: the strip takes the whole menu, and the first card you press puts that effect on. From then on one container at the right end lists the item's layers by name, in the order they are drawn, with the one you are working on lit — until you pick one yourself, that is the newest — and its card is lit in the strip, which scrolls to it whenever you pick another name; once you change a layer's settings its name is followed by how many — +2 — and pressing another card changes that layer to the new effect, in place. Browsing is one press per look, and nothing piles up while you try things.

Layering is deliberate. The list's last line, + layer, starts a new layer, so the next card you press adds instead of changing — a colour preset over a grade you dialled by hand, each its own layer, drawn in the order you added them; it is there only where the track can hold another layer. Under a thin line sit the picked layer's buttons, spread end to end: Remove first, then a pair of arrows that move it earlier or later in the drawing order — only while the track holds more than one layer — and Recipe (its own settings, opening in place of the cards) last. Removing a layer you can see is how you undo a preset, rather than reaching for Undo. If you press a card while the layer you are on carries settings you dialled yourself, the menu asks before switching, whatever kind of layer it is — a look (a correction, a weather or a Depth look among them), a shape or an edge: Replace switches and Cancel backs out.

A Recipe's rows say what they do: rest the mouse on a row, or hold a finger still on it, and one sentence about that setting appears over it (a row that stands for several settings, such as a curve, shows one line for each) — the value untouched — with a Learn more link to where these help docs describe it; a finger's sentence stays until you press somewhere else. A slider in such a row waits to see what your finger does: moving it drags the slider, a quick tap sets the value where you tapped, and a hold sets nothing.

A preset you tuned can be starred: a VHS with your own settings stars as that preset at your settings, and its Starred card puts exactly that look back, on a picture or on a video clip. A star on an item's first tab — on its card, or at the end of a row on a table or a drawing — keeps the whole item, and a group's is the first button on its bottom row. The list stays in the item's own menu, not in the Layers stack: an effect is a setting on the thing it treats, not a layer of its own.

Messages and progress while you edit

When an editor has something to tell you about the whole artifact — something it is still getting ready, or a problem — the message appears in the middle of the screen, over your work, where neither bar can cover it. A problem always comes with a close, so you can put it away, and, where it helps, a button to try again or reload; a support reference under it can be selected and copied. A confirmation — Share link copied, Invite sent — shows in the same place for a few seconds and then goes away on its own, with nothing to close. Progress on one thing you have selected — a cut, a render, a group being drawn into one picture — shows over that thing instead.

Undo and Redo

Edit freely — the editor saves as you go, and every change can be walked back.

• Use Undo on the right of the top bar to step back a change, one at a time.
• Use Redo to reapply a change you undid.
• Undo comes first, then Redo, in the same place on every editor, and each shows only while it has a step to take.
• From the keyboard, Cmd+Z undoes and Shift+Cmd+Z redoes (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z on Windows) — the same step the buttons take.
• On a touchscreen, in an Image, a Video or a Document, tap with two fingers to undo and with three fingers to redo.
• On an App, a 3D model and an audio piece, each step also takes you back to where you made the change — the screen, tab or track editor it was made in.
• Experiment as much as you like; you can always walk a change back.

Undo and Redo are for small, in-the-moment corrections within your editing session. To keep a whole state you can come back to, save a version: open File, choose Save, then Save draft. On an App, you can name the version first.