# Overview

The console is the bench's window: everything the bench does — installing
modules, starting device servers, running field tests and experiments — is a
button or a menu item here. This part of the documentation goes through it
element by element. For a task from start to finish, see [Usages](../usage/index.md);
for the same actions typed in a terminal, see [CLI](../cli/index.md).

## Opening it

- **Windows** — *Start ▸ PLESTY Bench*, or the desktop shortcut if you asked
  the installer for one.
- **macOS** — *PLESTY Bench* in Launchpad or `~/Applications`.
- **Linux** — *PLESTY Bench* in the applications menu.
- **Any terminal** — `plesty-server gui`.

The console opens the fleet it had open last time. A fresh bench starts on an
empty fleet of its own, `<home>/fleets/default.yaml`, and its first start
opens **Welcome**, which offers to install the demo and run it on this PC —
see [The welcome demo experiment](../welcome_demo.md).

## The window at a glance

```{figure} ../imgs/gui/window-devices.png
:width: 100%
:alt: The console with the Devices tab in front: a menu bar, the Devices card listing three devices, the selected device's card with its buttons and log, and the status line.

The console on the **Devices** tab, with *pm100d* selected.
```

From top to bottom:

| Part | What it is | Page |
|---|---|---|
| **Menu bar** | *File, Edit, Device, Experiment, Hub, Server, View, Help* | [Menus](menus.md) |
| **Run banner** | Only while a run is going: its experiment and run, how far it has got, and how many of the devices it uses are up — *pol-pl · run-0007 · 41/90 steps · devices 2/3 up*. Whichever tab is in front. | |
| **Tabs** | **Experiments** (in front when the console opens) and **Devices** | [Experiments tab](experiments.md), [Devices tab](devices.md) |
| **Upper card** | A table: devices on the Devices tab, runs on the Experiments tab | |
| **Lower card** | The row selected above: its buttons and its panes | |
| **Status line** | What the bench is doing — see below | |

The cards' buttons are icons: hold the pointer over one for its name and what
it does. These pages show each icon beside its name, **Fleet up**
![Fleet up](../imgs/gui/btn-fleet-up.png){height=22px} for instance; a red
one removes or deletes something, and asks first.

Everything refreshes by itself once a second; **Refresh**
![Refresh](../imgs/gui/btn-fleet-refresh.png){height=22px} or F5 re-reads at
once.

## The status line

```{image} ../imgs/gui/status-line.png
:width: 490px
:alt: The status line: the home folder, the fleet file, how many devices are in the working fleet, and when it last refreshed.
```

Left to right: the bench's home folder, the fleet file in use, which fleets
the device table shows (*View ▸ Fleet*), how many devices are in the working
fleet, where the agent listens (only while it runs — see
[Server menu](menus.md#server)) and when the window last looked.

Messages appear to the left of it and fade after 20 seconds; *View ▸
Messages…* keeps them all. Every install, update and uninstall ends in one:
green when it worked, red with the last line its job wrote when it did not. A
message stays on one line; hold the pointer over it for the whole text. A
**failure** stays in red with a **Dismiss** button until you dismiss it or the
next action succeeds — never as a pop-up, because an install runs for minutes
and a pop-up would freeze the window until somebody came back to click it.

When a newer PLESTY Bench is on PyPI, the right end of the line says
*Update available: plesty-bench 0.5.1*; clicking it opens *Help ▸ Check for
updates…*. The console asks once a day, when it starts; *Server ▸ Configure…*
turns that off.

## Closing it

Closing the window stops everything it runs — every device server, every job,
and the agent — after a confirmation that lists them. A bench that has to keep
its devices running with nobody logged in runs without a window: see
[Keep a bench up without a window](../usage/headless.md).

## In this part

- [The Devices tab](devices.md) — the device table and its buttons, with the
  forms they open (Declare, Device config, Field test) and the Control window;
  the Log, Jobs, Reports, Terminal and Traffic panes.
- [The Experiments tab](experiments.md) — the run table and its buttons, with
  Create run and Configure; the Log, Data, Report and Visualization panes.
- [Menus](menus.md) — every menu item and its shortcut, with the forms only a
  menu opens: Fleet file, Add experiment, Hub, Load from, Installed modules, Server
  configuration, Benches, Report a problem.