Rally on your Mac

Rally is a Mac app, and it tries to behave like one. This page covers its Mac habits: an icon in the menu bar, starting when you log in, staying open when you close its window, and the menus along the top of the screen. The settings for the first two are in Settings → Application.

Rally in the menu bar#

The menu bar is the strip across the top of your screen, and its right-hand end is where small icons for the Wi-Fi, the battery and the clock live. Rally keeps its mark there too, unless you tell it not to.

Click the Rally mark and you get:

• Your recent Channels, up to ten, grouped under date headings such as Today and Yesterday. Click one to open it in Rally. Long names are shortened to fit, and a Channel Rally has not finished naming yet shows as Untitled channel.
• Open Rally, which brings the main window forward.
• Quit Rally, which quits it properly.

If you have no recent Channels, the menu says No recent channels. If you are signed out, it says Sign in to Rally. The list refreshes when you click the icon, so it is always current.

The menu is the fastest way back into something you were working on an hour ago, from any app, without hunting for the Rally window. It also gives Rally somewhere to live when no window is open, which matters more than it sounds (see Closing the window is not quitting).

Turning it on or off#

The switch is Show Rally in the menu bar, in Settings → Application under Appearance. It is on by default.

If the switch is on but the mark has not appeared, Settings says "Rally could not add itself to the menu bar. Turn this off and on to try again, or restart Rally." Do as it says; one of the two almost always works.

Opening Rally at login#

Settings → Application → Startup has Open Rally at login. With it on, Rally starts by itself whenever you log in to your Mac, so it is ready when you sit down and notifications reach you without you having to remember to open it.

How it starts depends on the menu bar setting:

• With Rally in the menu bar, it starts quietly there, with no window. Click the mark, or the Dock icon, when you want it.
• Without it, a window opens as usual.

When you install Rally, it turns this on for you the first time it runs. Switch it off and it stays off.

macOS has the final say over what opens at login. If you remove Rally from the Mac's own System Settings → General → Login Items, Rally respects that, and the switch in Settings shows whatever macOS reports. If macOS wants you to approve the change first, the switch reflects that too, until you do.

Closing the window is not quitting#

On a Mac, closing Rally's window with the red button or ⌘ W does not quit Rally. It keeps running in the background, so the menu bar mark stays and notifications keep arriving. This is normal Mac behaviour, the same as Mail or Messages, but it can be a surprise if you expected the app to go away.

To bring a window back, click Rally in the Dock, click Open Rally in the menu bar, or open Rally again from Applications.

To quit for good, do one of these:

• Press ⌘ Q.
• Choose Rally → Quit Rally from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
• Click the Rally mark in the menu bar and choose Quit Rally.

Only one copy of Rally runs at a time. Opening it again while it is already running brings the existing window forward instead of starting a second copy.

Rally's windows#

Most of the time you work in the main window, but Rally opens a few others. Each is an ordinary Mac window: you can move it, resize it, or put it on another display, and Rally remembers where you left it, including which display.

Pop-out artifact windows are especially handy on a second monitor: keep a document open on one screen while you discuss it on the other. Ones you leave open come back after you quit and reopen Rally.

In the Settings and Sidekicks windows, Esc closes the window, as long as no dialog is open and you are not in the middle of typing something.

The menus at the top of the screen#

When Rally is the app in front, the Mac's menu bar shows Rally's menus.

The Check for Updates… item changes its wording as an update arrives; the next page explains each stage. The help you are reading is on the website, so Help → Rally website is one way back to it.