Guides · 8 of 10
Arrange your hive
Put your bees where you want them, snap them together into hives, and give them a look that suits your desktop.
1. Move bees and make hives
- Drag a bee anywhere on your desktop.
- Drop it next to another bee. It snaps edge to edge into a hive.
- Drag any bee in a hive to move the whole hive.
- To take one bee out, hold ⌥ Option while you drag it, or right-click it → Separate from Hive.
What success looks like: the bees sit edge to edge and move together.
Settings → Placement has the controls: Move bees by dragging, Join bees into hives, Space between bees (tight to roomy) and New bees start in (a corner of your screen). To send one bee to a corner: right-click it → Move to.
2. Put bees in order
- Settings → Bees. Drag a bee by its ≡ handle to where you want it. (Or click its row and press ⌥⌘↑ or ⌥⌘↓.)
- Click Arrange on Screen in This Order.
What success looks like: the bees sit edge to edge in a column, in the same order as the list, starting from the first bee. The menu bar list follows the same order.
To keep it that way, turn on Settings → Placement → Keep the hive in Settings order. Then adding, removing or reordering bees moves them on screen too.
3. Choose a shape
- Settings → Appearance → Bee shape.
- Choose Hexagon, Circle, Square or Rounded.
What success looks like: every bee changes shape. Hexagons and circles join in a honeycomb; squares in a grid.
Also in Settings → Appearance: Bee style (Clean, Classic, Glass, Honeycomb or Halo), Bee size for every bee at once, and the Unread badge (a number, a dot, or hidden).
4. Choose a look
- Settings → Appearance.
- Click a swatch: Dark, Light, WhatsApp, Honey, Hive, Meadow or Dusk. Or choose Automatic for one look by day and another by night, and pick them under the swatches.
What success looks like: open a bee, and its chats use the new colours.
5. Outlines and icons
- Right-click a bee → Outline, and choose a colour or none.
- For its picture: right-click the bee → Edit Icon & Name…, or Settings → Bees → click its icon. Choose your profile picture, the service’s app icon, a picture of your own, two big letters or a short word, on a colour you like.
What success looks like: the bee shows its new outline and picture straight away.
6. Hide bees, and find them again
The hexagon in the menu bar is Waggle’s menu. It lists your bees, with unread counts. Click one to open it.
- Hide Bees hides them all. Show Bees brings them back.
- Bring Bees Here puts every bee at the top right of your main display, for when you can’t find them.
- Add a Bee, Settings… (⌘,), Check for Updates… and Quit Waggle are here too.
In Settings → Behaviour: Hide during full-screen video, Show in Dock (adds a Dock icon and the usual app menu) and Open at login.
Unplugged a display? Its bees move to your main display straight away, and go back when you plug it in again.
Getting noticed
A bee wiggles when a message arrives. Settings → Appearance sets Wiggle when a message arrives (Off, Once or Until read), Wiggle strength, and Glow when a message arrives. Preview wiggle and glow tries them out. Settings → Sounds sets the volume.