The three swipes you'll learn in five minutes

The gestures you'll use in Synapse. Chips, decks, and the four taps that work the same in every workspace. Learn them once, use them everywhere.

What you’ll do

Learn four gestures: single tap, double-tap, long-press, swipe-down. Plus the swipe-deck under the chips. Once you have these, you can drive Synapse without reading anything else.

Why nurses use this

The dashboard’s three workspaces could each have had their own navigation. They don’t. Every chip uses the same four gestures and every deck swipes the same way, because if you’re getting interrupted six to fourteen times an hour you don’t want to be relearning which screen is which. Same gestures, different content.

How to get there

You’re already there. After you tap Start Shift, the dashboard is the screen you land on. Three chips across the top (Patients, Tasks, Notes). One deck of cards under whichever chip is selected.

Step-by-step

The gestures, roughly in order of how often you’ll use them:

Single tap an inactive chip → switch workspaces. Tap Tasks while you’re on Patients to jump to the tasks deck. Tap Patients to come back. The number on each chip is the current count: patients on Patients, pending tasks on Tasks.
Single tap the active chip → open its menu. Tapping the chip you’re already on doesn’t switch tabs (you’re already there). It opens a small action menu. Patients menu has Current, Previous, Add patient, Import patient, Dictate patient. Tasks menu has the filter options and routine actions. Notes menu has Add note.
Double-tap any chip → straight to add. This is the move you’ll use most. Double-tap Patients and the Add Patient form opens. Double-tap Tasks for Add Task. Double-tap Notes for Add Note. Quick vibration, no menu, no fishing.
Long-press any chip → switch tab and open its menu at the same time. Handy when you’re on Tasks but want to filter Patients to Previous. One gesture instead of two.
Swipe down on a chip → menu only. Stays on the current workspace and surfaces the menu of the chip you swiped on. Niche, but it’s there.
Swipe left/right on the deck below → rotate cards. Same on every workspace. Flip through patients on Patients, tasks on Tasks, notes on Notes. Fling harder to advance faster. Tap a card to open the full sheet. Double-tap a card to edit.

Tips from the floor

Double-tap is the muscle-memory move. After you’ve used it twice, “tap, scroll, tap again” feels slow. Works the same on every chip.
There’s a short pause after the first tap. The chip waits to see if you’re going to double-tap before treating it as a single tap. You’ll notice it the first day and then you won’t. The shortcut is worth it.
The Tasks chip count is filter-aware. Switch to Medication and the count drops to medication tasks only. Trips new users for a day, then it becomes the most useful number on the screen.
Tab state is preserved. Swipe from Patients to Tasks, scroll halfway through the task deck, swipe back to Patients. When you return to Tasks, you’re at the same card you left.
Long-press a card (not a chip, an actual card) and something different happens. Worth finding. We won’t tell you what.

Common questions

Why three chips instead of a bottom nav bar? Bottom nav bars get covered by the iOS home indicator and Android gesture bar. Chips sit at the top, where your eye already is. Same idea, fewer covered taps.

Can I reorder the chips? Not currently. The fixed order is part of how the muscle memory builds.

What if I tap the wrong chip? Tap the right one. Workspace switches are instant; you don’t lose state.

Do the same gestures work on tablet and Watch? Tablet, yes. Same chips, more room. Watch, no. The Watch is a list-style glance, not a deck.

I prefer paper. Is Synapse going to make me use these gestures? You can skip them. The Brain Sheet Builder prints to PDF and never asks you to swipe anything. Some nurses live there and never open the dashboard.

I double-tapped by accident and the form opened. How do I cancel? Tap the dismiss arrow or tap outside the form. Nothing’s saved until you hit Save.

Where this fits in your shift

These are the gestures everything else uses. The per-workspace guides (Patients, Tasks, Notes) are mostly about what each workspace contains. The gestures are the same in all three.

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