What the application is doing

Click the activity ring in the control band to see progress, errors and recently completed work.

The ring stays visible: empty when idle, an arc for measurable progress, a rotating quarter-circle for unknown totals and a red dot for failure. While viewing a photograph it can show loading stages.

The panel floats without taking focus. Drag or resize it, or move it to another display while continuing to use photograph shortcuts. It stays open when another application becomes active and retains its dark appearance.

Activity groups. Work is grouped by library, current photograph and output. Frequent thumbnail and proxy decodes are combined into counts. Downloads, longer decodes, publishing, deletion and discovery get named rows. A row with a known total draws a thin bar under its title. A row about one photograph shows that photograph beside its title; work over a set shows a title alone. Use ✕ to stop supported jobs or Try Again for retryable failures. A row stays on screen for at least a second or so, and a finished row shows a tick and a full bar for a moment before it moves to history, so quick work can still be read.

Edited previews need refreshing. Synced edits and updates that change how Frames draws pixels can need new edited previews. The grid shows the unedited photograph until its preview is rebuilt. Frames rebuilds those with local originals in the background as part of normal sync. Activity shows when a local refresh is waiting for power, temperature or for you to leave Develop. Only previews still pending after the local pass get a neutral Refresh offer; this is not a sync error. Refresh on that row also fetches unavailable originals; ✕ stops it after the photograph in flight and Try Again repeats only the ones that failed. Your edits are never touched.

Recently done. The last fifty completed, stopped or failed jobs remain listed, newest first with local date and time. The rows sit on a timeline, with a green dot for finished work, a grey one for stopped work and a red one for a failure. Closing the panel moves current failures into this history with their reasons. The section can be folded, and its state is remembered.

Device sync. A standing Sync line remains in Activity when no transfer is running. It distinguishes sync being off, changes saved here but waiting to reach iCloud, an offline device, an account or storage problem, changes that need a newer Frames, and the last successful contact with iCloud. That time survives a relaunch. Try Sync Again appears after a retryable failure. An up-to-date line means this device has completed a round with iCloud; it does not confirm that another device has received the changes.

Sync reports finding photographs, cataloguing changes and syncing albums separately. Work without a known total shows the processed count. Storage scans and clearing are also reported.

Rendition status. The status bar separately shows the photograph’s current rendition and any loading error. Rating and verdict are shown in another part of the bar.