Skip to main content

Your submission was sent successfully! Close

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!
In these regular emails you will find the latest updates from Canonical and upcoming events where you can meet our team.Close

Thank you for contacting us. A member of our team will be in touch shortly. Close

  1. Blog
  2. Article

Canonical
on 14 February 2013


We want everyone to design and build beautiful and usable apps, and the App Design Guides help us do just that! So to kick things off, if you’re thinking about how to layout your app in portrait view, here’s how.

Core layout

 

Your app must have

  1. A header on the top of the screen, which consists of a coloured line, a title area and a divider
  2. A content area
  3. A toolbar with app controls which is revealed by using the bottom edge

For details about the header, toolbar and content areas, read more about app layouts.

Related posts


Lyubomir Popov
17 February 2025

A deep dive into our grid system and typography for the A4 format

Ubuntu Article

We recently redesigned our whitepapers as part of our broader rebranding project. Let’s look at some of the ideas behind our approach to layout and typography. The goal? A reliable, accessible modular system that communicates with clarity, purpose and precision across mediums — qualities that tie directly back to our brand values. Context ...


piperdeck
20 January 2025

An Introduction to Open Source Licensing for complete beginners

Design Article

Open source is one of the most exciting, but often misunderstood, innovations of our modern world. I still remember the first time I installed linux on my laptop, saw the vast array of packages I could install on it, all the utilities and libraries that make it work, all the forum threads filled with advice ...


Maximilian Blazek
6 November 2024

Designing Canonical’s Figma libraries for performance and structure

Design Article

How Canonical’s Design team rebuilt their Figma libraries, with practical guidelines on structure, performance, and maintenance processes. ...