Ambient mode

Ambient mode removes the bar. Your page keeps its own buttons, styled your way, and fires reactions through the JS API — while everything live keeps working: the falling reactions (yours and every other reader's, in real time), the counts, the rate limits and budgets. Available on Supporter and Pro plans.

Set it up

1. In the console, open your app → Customize → Layout → ambient.
2. Keep the <tapback-bar> element in your page. It renders nothing in ambient mode, but it's still the anchor that opens the session and names the entity:

<tapback-bar entity="your-page-id"></tapback-bar>
<script type="module" async src="https://api.tapback.party/loader.js"
        data-key="pk_live_…"></script>

3. Wire your UI:

<button id="love">♥ <span id="love-n">0</span></button>
<script type="module">
  await customElements.whenDefined("tapback-bar"); // the loader tag is async — wait for it
  document.getElementById("love").onclick = () => tapback.react("heart");
  tapback.on("counts", (totals) => {
    document.getElementById("love-n").textContent = totals.heart ?? 0;
  });
</script>

That's a working live-reactions page: taps land in the shared room, other readers' reactions fall down your page as they happen, and your counter updates live.

What to know

• Falls cover the whole page by default in ambient mode (there's no bar corner to anchor a strip to). The fall controls in the console — speed, travel direction, straight/weave — all still apply.
• Accessibility is yours. The bar's buttons ship labels, keyboard handling and a screen-reader live region; in ambient mode your UI owns those. Use real <button> elements and give them accessible names.
• Mute: there's no bell, so offer your own control wired to tapback.mute() if your audience needs one. A visitor's remembered mute on your site is honored across visits.
• Plans: ambient is a paid layout. If an app's plan lapses, the same config serves the floating bar (with the badge) until the plan is restored — nothing breaks, and no reconfiguration is needed when it comes back.
• Archives: the static archive export renders the floating bar with final counts (an archive is read-only, so there's nothing for your buttons to fire). The archive bundle ships an inert tapback stub, so your UI's calls no-op instead of throwing.