Installing
Warpstead installs from the Microsoft Store. The link is on warpstead.com/beta. It needs Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11, on a 64-bit PC.
On Windows 10 the programs you put on the canvas get a thin yellow border: that’s Windows marking a window that’s being captured, and only Windows 11 lets an app turn it off. Everything else works the same.
The screen
Warpstead opens over your whole main screen, taskbar included. If you have a second monitor, it stays your normal Windows desktop: in this beta Warpstead uses the main screen only.
- On the left, a narrow column with your workspaces (your projects), the Mission Control button, Settings and the ? for help.
- At the top center, the pill with the name of the open workspace and when it was last saved. Under it, two small dots switch between the two canvases of the workspace (more in The canvas).
- At the top right, Undo, Redo, the clock, Screenshot and Exit.
- At the bottom center, the QuickDock: App, Folder, Note, History and ··· for everything else. Click a chip to add that node in the middle of the view, or drag it where you want it.
- At the bottom right, the zoom controls, the minimap, and your Windows notification icons (Wi-Fi, volume, the apps that live there). They work as they do on the taskbar: click, double-click and right-click go to the real icon.
Hold F1 to see all of this labelled on screen.
Your first canvas
Double-click an empty spot and pick a node: App… to bring in a Windows program, Folder for a folder, Note, Image, PDF, and so on. You can also drag files and folders from File Explorer straight onto the canvas.
Move around with the scroll wheel (it zooms on empty canvas), the middle mouse button, or by holding Space and dragging. F fits everything in view, 0 goes back to 100%.
Saving
There is no Save button: every change to the canvas is saved as you go. The pill at the top says “saved just now” or how long ago. If a save fails, a notice tells you, and the pill shows “save error”.
What’s saved is the layout: which nodes are where, their settings, the wires between them. Your files stay where they are on disk. A Folder node shows a folder, it doesn’t copy it.
Warpstead keeps its own data in the app’s folder, like every Store app. Uninstalling it removes that data, workspaces included. To keep your workspaces, copy them first: in File Explorer go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages, open the folder whose name contains Warpstead, then LocalCache\Roaming\com.warpstead.
Leaving Warpstead
Exit at the top right asks for confirmation. The programs you opened in nodes keep running in Windows, and when you come back they return to their places on the canvas.
The beta
The beta is free and works until November 30, 2026. Two weeks before the end it reminds you once a day. When it ends, Warpstead saves your work and closes, and shows a screen with a button that opens your workspaces folder. Your files aren’t touched.
To know the real date, Warpstead asks the time from microsoft.com, cloudflare.com or google.com every few hours. Offline it uses the PC’s clock.
Updates
The Store doesn’t update a program that’s open, and Warpstead tends to stay open all day. So Warpstead checks the Store a minute after it starts and then every four hours. When there’s a new version, a notice says “Update ready” with an Update button, and Settings shows Update to next to the version number.
Update saves your work, downloads the new version and closes Warpstead for a moment while Windows installs it; then Windows opens it again. If the Store doesn’t allow a silent update (for example, automatic updates are off in the Store), Warpstead opens the Warpstead page of the Store in a node, and you press Update there.
It won’t update while a video export or the AI engine installation is running: finish that first.