One coin per screen

On this screen the Title Area draws one of five combinations: icon and name, icon and symbol, symbol and name together, name only, or symbol only. You build it on the settings page from an Icon checkbox and a three-way choice after “Show:”: “Symbol”, “Name” or “Both”. The factory setting is the icon with the name. The choice is remembered for One per screen alone, which is what the “for One” tag beside the section heading means, so Two and Four per screen can keep a different title.

• Icon with a name or a symbol: the coin's logo sits at the left edge, 47 pixels square, and the text starts a short gap after it, centered on the logo's middle.
• “Both” without the icon: the symbol in the largest title size, then the name beside it, as large as the remaining width allows but never larger than the symbol, sharing the symbol's bottom line. A short name can match the symbol's size; a long one comes out smaller.
• Name only or symbol only: the text alone, starting at the left edge and centered in the height of the title band.

The title is drawn in the colorset's title color (near-white in the Default colorset) and never changes with the market. The up and down colors belong to the price and the chart.

The ticker tries the title in seven type sizes, largest first, and uses the first size that fits the width left beside the icon, or the full width when there is no icon. The smallest of the seven is about half the height of the largest, so most names fit whole. Only when even the smallest size is too wide does the ticker cut letters off the end, one at a time, until the rest fits. There is no ellipsis. The fit is worked out again for every coin as it comes up, so a short name sits in large type while a long one steps down, coin by coin.

With “Both”, the symbol keeps the largest size and only the name gives way: it steps down in the space left after the symbol, and it is never drawn taller than the symbol beside it.

The ticker shows a name that matches its symbol only once. Before it draws a symbol and a name together, it compares the symbol with the name written in capitals, and when they match it draws the symbol alone. XRP, whose name and symbol are both “XRP”, reads “XRP”, never “XRP XRP”. The same check applies when the symbol and name stand in for a missing icon. The other combinations show a single text anyway, so they need no check.

In either icon combination, a coin the ticker has no icon for is titled with its symbol and name side by side, in one type size, starting at the left edge where the icon would have been. The name-only and symbol-only titles look the same with or without an icon.

The icons live on the ticker itself. They are stored as one pack of coin artwork beside the firmware, and each icon is found by the coin's own identity rather than its symbol, so two coins that share a symbol still get their own logos. Nothing is downloaded when a coin comes up. A coin missing from the pack, usually one listed after the pack was made, keeps its symbol and name in the icon's place. A new pack reaches the ticker by itself with its automatic updates, so there is nothing to do, and if the pack is ever missing or damaged, the ticker fetches a fresh copy on its own; every icon title shows symbol and name until it arrives. If a missing logo matters to you, get in touch. More in icon updates and coins show no icon.

In the Amber and Green colorsets the icons are drawn in the set's own single color, like the screen of an old monochrome monitor, so a colorful logo never breaks the look.

The ticker's screen is 240 pixels wide, and the icon, a gap, the symbol at full size, another gap and a readable name do not fit across it, so the settings page does not let you choose all three. It keeps your latest pick, drops the other, and says which it did:

• Tap “Both” while Icon is ticked: “Both” stays and the icon is switched off, with the note “Icon+Both won't fit, deselecting Icon”.
• Tick Icon while “Both” is selected: the icon stays and the text changes to “Name”, with the note “Icon+Both won't fit, selecting Name”.

The note stays up for four seconds while the control being dropped blinks, so you can see what moved. If that combination ever reaches the ticker's settings anyway, the ticker draws the icon with the name. See also why it says Icon+Both won't fit.

The ticker's type draws unaccented letters, digits and ordinary punctuation, so accented letters and other scripts are removed from a name or symbol before it is drawn. If a name loses every character, the symbol stands in for it, and the other way round. If both come up empty, the ticker shows the coin's icon, even with a name-only or symbol-only title, because the logo identifies the coin better than anything left of its text. With no icon either, it prints the coin's plain-letter identifier rather than a row of empty boxes.

Two coins that share a symbol are told apart by adding the icon or the name to the title. Symbols are not unique, and with a symbol-only title two different coins with the same symbol would look identical, so the Title Area warns you when your list holds such a pair: “with Symbol only they'll look identical. Add Icon to tell them apart.” Icons are matched to the coin itself rather than its symbol, so each coin shows its own. See coins that share a symbol.

The ticker can show seven chart periods, all counting back from the moment the coin was fetched: 24 hours, 48 hours, 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days and 90 days. They are the buttons under Select period(s) in the Chart Area, labeled “24h”, “48h”, “7d”, “14d”, “30d”, “60d” and “90d”, and each chart names itself on the screen with the same label. From the factory the 24h and 90d charts are on. Charts exist only in One per screen; Two and Four per screen have no room for one (why).

Each chart is CoinGecko's price history for its period, and it arrives with the price each time the coin's turn begins, so moving from one chart to the next during a stay fetches nothing. The right end of the line is the latest price at the moment of that fetch, the same figure printed above it. A coin younger than the period is charted over the history it has, so a month-old coin's 90d chart covers that month.

The chart spaces time evenly from left to right: the oldest price of the period at the left edge, the latest at the right. Vertically, each chart is scaled to its own period: the period's highest and lowest prices fill most of the chart's height, with a little room above and below so the line stays clear of the edges. When a whole period barely moved, the line keeps to the middle of the chart, so a stablecoin's tiny wobble does not look like a storm.

No price scale is printed, so a chart shows the shape of the period rather than its size: a 2% week and a 20% week can fill the chart the same way. The 24h% is the number to read for size; on the chart, the dashed lines show where the period started and ended within its range. The line is drawn in the up color when its latest price ends higher on the chart than its first, the down color when it ends lower, and gray when both land on the same level (see up and down colors).

Time divider lines are eleven faint vertical lines, one at each edge and nine between, that cut every chart into ten equal slices of time, oldest on the left. Each slice is a tenth of the period:

The dividers are drawn in the colorset's divider color, dark gray in Default, and they double as the grid the period label's letters sit in. They are on from the factory; untick them under Include within chart for a bare line.

First/last price lines are two dashed lines across the whole chart: one at the level where the line starts, the period's first price, and one at the level where it ends, the latest price. When the latest line sits above the first, the coin is up over the period; below it, the coin is down; the distance between them is the period's net move, measured against the period's own range. Each has its own color in the colorset, purple for the first price and gold for the latest in Default, so you can tell them apart where they cross the price line. The dashes are 5 pixels long with 5-pixel gaps. They are on from the factory, under Include within chart.

The period label (“24h”, “7d” and so on) is set in the largest text size, in the colorset's label color (mid gray in Default), with each character centered in its own time slice, so no letter ever sits on a divider. Period label position has two separate choices: the row (“Auto”, “Top” or “Bottom”) and the spot along it (“Auto”, “Left”, “Center” or “Right”). From the factory the row is pinned to Bottom and the spot is Auto.

• A spot counts as clear when at least 6 pixels separate the label from the price line, checked every 2 pixels across the label's width, and from the dashed lines when they are on.
• Spot on Auto: on the bottom row the ticker tries the right corner, then one slot in, then the left corner and one slot in, then the center and either side of it. On the top row it starts from the left corner instead. The first clear spot wins. Corners come first because a trending line leaves two opposite corners empty: a rising line clears the bottom right, a falling line the bottom left. A three-letter label cannot sit exactly in the middle of ten slices, so the center try weighs both near-center spots and takes the clearer.
• Row on Auto: the bottom row first, and the top row only when nothing on the bottom row is clear.
• A pinned spot keeps its corner and slides one slot sideways only when the line runs through it; with the row on Auto, it may also move up to the top row.
• When nothing allowed is clear, the label takes the allowed spot with the most room. It never leaves the rows you allowed, and it has no off switch.

With several periods selected, the coin plays their charts one after another, shortest first: 24h, 48h, 7d, 14d, 30d, 60d, 90d, in that order whatever order you selected them in. The coin's Show Coin for time (10 to 30 seconds, in steps of 5) is split evenly, so each chart gets the stay divided by the number of charts. From the factory that is the 24h chart and then the 90d chart, each for half of 10 seconds. The title, price and figures stay put and only the chart area is redrawn, while the figures keep taking turns across the whole stay. After the last chart the next coin comes up. The Chart Area repeats the Show Coin for slider under the period buttons and prints each chart's share beside it, so if the charts flip by too fast, that is the place to give the coin more time. With all seven on and 10 seconds per coin, each chart gets about 1.4 seconds.

With every period unticked, the chart area becomes a small table of changes: one row each for 7d, 30d and 90d, with the label on the left and the change on the right, measured from the first price of that period to the latest price, with two decimals and a sign. When the Price Area shows no figures at all, a 24h row leads the table, since the 24h% is then nowhere else on the screen. Each change is colored by its own direction, gray when it rounds to 0.00%. A row whose history is not available shows “--” in dim gray, and thin lines in the divider color separate the rows. The coin stays on this one screen for its whole stay, and the settings page says as much beside the slider: “(no chart = show: 7/30/90d % change)”.

A chart with no data for its period keeps its frame and says so in the middle: “(No 24h Data)”, naming the period that is missing. The dividers and the dashed lines are still drawn if they are on, the dashed lines running flat through the middle, so the screen reads as a chart with nothing to show rather than a fault. When a coin's whole fetch fails, its charts are skipped for that turn and the chart area stays empty during the coin's short stay. See chart shows no data.

From the factory, One per screen shows as much as fits on the screen:

• Title Area: the coin's icon and its name.
• Price Area: the price, colored by its 24-hour direction, with the 24h% at the right end of the row beneath it and 24h Vol and Market Cap taking turns on the left, each for half the stay. Market Cap Rank is off, and so is the V/M prefix in the Default colorset.
• Chart Area: a 24h chart, then a 90d chart, each for half the stay, with the time dividers and the first and latest price lines drawn, and the period label on the bottom row in whichever spot is clear.
• Show Coin for: 10 seconds per coin.
• Colorset: Default, green for up and red for down.

The first picture above is one moment of that screen: the 24h chart, during the volume's turn.

With the factory settings, each coin appears with its icon, name, price, 24h Vol and 24h% over its 24h chart. Halfway through the stay two things change: Market Cap takes the volume's place, and the 90d chart replaces the 24h one, while the title, the price and the 24h% stay where they are. The figure's turn is timed from the start of the coin's turn and the chart's from the moment the first screen finished drawing, so the figure changes a moment before the chart. At the end of the stay the next coin comes up and the pattern starts again.

The “Bare essentials” screen, the second picture, is the sparest the settings allow, and it takes four changes: Symbol only in the Title Area, all four boxes in the Price Area unticked, a single period under Select period(s) (the tile uses 24h), and both boxes under Include within chart unticked. What is left is the symbol, the price and a bare line with its period label. With the Price Area empty, the ticker moves the price down a little for more air under the title, and the chart grows into the rest of the height.

Two things stay whatever you turn off. The period label has no off switch. And the price keeps its color, so even with the 24h% gone the price still says which way the last 24 hours went, while the line says the same about its own period.

The factory settings give the most information per glance. In one stay you see which coin it is by logo and name, its price, its 24-hour move as a number, how much of it was traded and how big it is, and two pictures of where the price has been, one day and three months, with the dashed lines marking where each period started and ended. The screen changes during the stay as the figures and the charts take turns, which rewards a ticker you look at often and from close by.

The minimal screen suits a ticker you read from across a room. A symbol is short, so it usually gets the largest title size; the price is the only number; and two colors carry the story, the price's for the last 24 hours and the line's for its period. With one period and no figures, nothing on the coin screen changes until the next coin comes up, which makes it calm to have in view all day.

Every choice is independent, so any point between the two works: keep the icon and drop the figures, keep one figure beside a single long chart, or turn the lines back on. These choices are remembered for One per screen only, so Two and Four per screen keep their own, while the colorset applies to all three. To return to the factory settings, use “Factory defaults” under “Restore from” in the Device section of the settings page. It also puts your coins and colors back as the ticker shipped (restore factory defaults).