---
title: On your phone
description: Else runs in a mobile browser and can be installed to your home screen. What moves, what is missing, and why you should not wait for a notification.
---

Else works on a phone browser, and it can be installed to your home screen so it opens
like an app. **There is no iOS or Android app** — nothing to find in the App Store or on
Google Play, and nothing coming that this page can promise you. The installed version is
the web app, saved to your home screen.

Two things follow from that, and they are the two worth knowing before you rely on your
phone: **it will not notify you**, and long work does not need you to keep the tab open.

## Installing it

Open **elsedoes.com/home** in your phone browser and use the browser's own menu — *Add
to Home Screen* on iOS Safari, *Install app* or *Add to Home screen* in Chrome. Else
supplies everything the browser needs for that: the app installs under its own name and
icon, opens without browser chrome, and starts on your home screen.

Two caveats, both real:

- **Else does not prompt you to install.** There is no banner and no "install" button
  anywhere in the app. If you do not go looking in the browser menu, nothing will suggest
  it.
- **Install from `/home`, not from the marketing homepage.** The front page of the site
  and the app are served separately, and only the app offers itself for installing. If
  the option is greyed out or absent, you are on the wrong page — navigate into the app
  first.

## What the layout does differently

The sidebar becomes a **bar across the bottom of the screen** with five destinations:
**Home**, **Chats**, **Tasks**, **Assistants** and **Apps**. **Chats** is mobile-only —
it slides your conversation history up as a sheet rather than sending you to a screen.
**Wallet**, **Settings** and **Sign out** move into the menu behind your avatar, at the
right-hand end of the bar.

Elsewhere, panels that are side-by-side on a desktop become things that slide up from the
bottom: the run panel above the composer, the engine picker, and the results desk. On a
small phone the desk takes the whole screen rather than sitting beside the conversation.
**Settings** turns into a two-level list — pick a section, then come back — instead of
the rail-and-pane layout.

The bar sits above the home indicator on a notched phone rather than under it, and text
fields are sized so that focusing one does not zoom the page.

## Attaching things from a phone

The attach button opens your phone's own picker, and because Else accepts images, that
picker offers your camera and photo library alongside your files. There is no
camera-only shortcut — you go through the standard sheet. The same limits apply as
anywhere else; see [Limits](/docs/limits) and
[Giving it materials](/docs/giving-it-materials).

## What it will not do on a phone

**It will not notify you.** Else has no push notifications — not on iOS, not on Android,
not in an installed web app. When a run needs your approval or finishes, nothing appears
on your lock screen, and nothing arrives while the app is closed. The only mail Else
sends you today is your sign-in code.

The consequence for handed-off work: **come back and look.** A task that stops to check
with you waits indefinitely and costs nothing while it waits, so nothing is lost by
checking in an hour rather than in a minute — but nothing will tell you either. See
[When it checks with you](/docs/when-it-checks-with-you).

**It does not work offline.** Enough of the app is cached that a saved home-screen icon
will open and show its shell without a connection, but every conversation, task and
receipt comes from the network. There is no offline mode, no queued sending, and no
banner telling you that you have dropped off the network — a request made with no
connection simply fails.

**There are no touch gestures.** No swipe-to-go-back inside the app, no pull-to-refresh.
Use the bottom bar and the back controls in the interface.

## The short version

Install it from `/home`, use the bottom bar, attach from your camera roll — and treat
your phone as a place to *start* work and *collect* results, not as a place that will
tap you on the shoulder. Handing a job off and coming back to it is the pattern the
product is actually built around; see [Your first task](/docs/your-first-task).