Progress Tracker

The progress tracker is the editor's stitch counter and checklist (the shortcut list calls it Follow Mode). Open a pattern in it and the drawing tools step aside: the chart becomes a checklist of what's done, what's left, and where you are. It works on every craft the editor makes and on every device that runs the editor, and it's free.

Basics

• Enter and leave with F, Track progress in the editor top bar, or Track progress on any pattern in your library. depending on the pattern), or Track progress on any pattern in your library.
• Mark stitches by tapping or dragging with the Mark tool (M). Marked stitches show as crosses.
• Highlight one color from the colors panel; the rest fades back and marking locks to that color.
• Next stitch (N) rings the nearest unworked stitch of the active color.
• Nothing you do here changes the pattern. The tracker is read-only by design.

Entering and leaving

Three ways in:

1. Press F with a pattern open in the editor.
2. Click Track progress in the editor's top bar. The tooltip reads "Track your progress as you work".
3. From the library, open a pattern's details and choose Track progress. Library cards also show a progress bar once you've marked anything.

Leave with F again or the X in the toolbar. There's nothing to save; every mark was written as you made it.

Marking stitches

The floating toolbar at the bottom has four tools and the undo pair:

Two rules worth knowing:

• Marking never toggles. Tapping a marked stitch again does nothing, so an accidental double tap can't undo your evening. Clearing is its own tool, a right-click, or Undo.
• "Only the chosen color" is on by default. With a color picked, a drag across a mixed area marks only that color's stitches. Switch it off to mark everything under your finger.

Undo and redo (Cmd/Ctrl+Z, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Z) step through marks one at a time; hold either button to repeat. On desktop you can also walk the cursor with the arrow keys and mark the cursor cell with

Space. C cycles how finished stitches are drawn.

The colors panel

The panel on the right (a sheet on phones) is the checklist. At the top: overall progress, with Total, Done, and Left. Below it, one row per color with its remaining count and a small bar showing how far along that color is.

• Click a row to make that color active. Every other color fades back on the chart and the toolbar picks up the color's own LEFT count.
• Sort by what's left or by total to decide what to thread next.
• Stitches / Backstitch switches the target (see Backstitch).
• Marks lists your parking, frog, and highlight marks so you can jump to them.
• Progress over time opens the stats (see Stats).

Next stitch

Press N or tap Next stitch in the toolbar. The tracker rings the nearest unworked stitch of the active color and shows its row and column, so on a big chart you never scan for the last three stitches of a color. The ring follows your marks: finish it, press N again.

Parking, frog, and highlight marks

Choose the Marks tool (P) and tap a cell to place one of:

• Park ↖ ↗ ↙ ↘ — a parking mark in one of four corners, for a thread you've left hanging to come back to. Four corners because parked threads pile up on full-coverage charts.
• Frog — the stitch that needs unpicking. "Frog it" is the community's word for rip-it, rip-it.
• Free highlight — a mark on the block you're working right now.

Tap the same cell with the Marks tool to lift the mark. The Marks section of the colors panel lists every mark on the chart. Marks are available on every craft; they mark a place, not a stitch.

Backstitch

On cross stitch and needlepoint patterns, backstitch is a target of its own rather than something a cell tap falls through to. Switch the toggle at the top of the panel to Backstitch:

• The colors panel changes to your outline colors, each with its own segment count, a mark-all, and a clear-all.
• Tap a line to mark that segment worked, or drag along an outline to mark every segment you cross. Drag with the Unmark tool (or the right mouse button) to clear the same way.
• With a color picked and "Only the chosen color" on, a drag along a mixed outline marks only that color's lines.
• Worked segments draw in a different color; the unworked segments of the active color get a breathing halo so you can see what's left.

Undo works for backstitch marks exactly as it does for stitches.

Fractional stitches

A cell can hold more than one stitch: a quarter and a three-quarter, say. The tracker handles those per stitch, so the cell takes one tap per stitch and counts as finished on the last one. Cells with a single stitch behave as you'd expect. The square still counts once toward the total, so the header numbers stay honest. Fractional tracking is available on cross stitch and needlepoint patterns.

Stats: evenings left, streaks, sessions

Every mark is timestamped, and everything in Progress over time is derived from that:

• Finish estimate, phrased as "about N evenings" at your own pace. It's a median over the days you actually stitched, never a calendar date, so one marathon Saturday doesn't lie to you.
• Streak, which survives one missed day.
• Session records and a summary when you leave: stitches this session, time, pace.
• Calendar heatmap of when you stitch, bucketed from your own distribution.

The toolbar shows the live numbers as you go: LEFT for the active color, PROGRESS overall, Today, Session, and a session timer.

Sync, backup, and restore

• Local first. Every mark is written to your device before anything else, so a tap never waits on the network.
• Signed in, it syncs. The same progress appears on every device you're signed in on. If two devices both marked stitches while apart, the merge keeps both sessions; a clear on one device isn't lost to a stale copy on another.
• Backup and restore. Export progress to a file and restore it later, on the same pattern.
• Editing after progress exists warns you: marks are positional and are remapped from the top-left corner. Resizing from the top or left shifts them.

Phone layout

On a phone the layout is built for one hand: percentage and counts along the top, the chart in the middle, and a bottom sheet with Choose a color to highlight, the Pick and Next stitch buttons, and the tool row. The screen stays awake while the tracker is open. Pinch to zoom, two fingers to pan, one finger to mark.

Tips & gotchas

• Pick before you mark. With a color active and "Only the chosen color" on, you can drag freely across a busy area and only the thread in your needle gets marked.
• Use Pick (I) as an eyedropper. Tap the stitch you're about to work; it becomes the active color and the tool flips back to Mark.
• Mark-all per color in the colors panel is the fast way to catch up a project you started before the tracker existed.
• Row guides and the display settings (the sliders icon in the panel header) control how much of the chart fades back and how finished stitches are drawn.

Known limits

• No offline start. The tracker needs a connection to open a pattern. Once open, marks are saved locally and sync when you're back online.
• No PDF charts. Stitchmate doesn't read PDF patterns, so it tracks patterns made here or opened from .PAT, .OXS, and .XSD files. For third-party PDFs, see the Pattern Keeper comparison.
• No Pattern Keeper progress import yet. The format is documented; the importer isn't built.
• Backstitch and fractional tracking are cross stitch and needlepoint only. Diamond painting, fuse beads, and C2C have no outlines or partials to track.

For the pitch rather than the manual, see the stitch counter page.