View a method on your phone
The Methods tab is your full protocol library on the phone, searchable and available offline. Tap any method to read it big and scrollable at the bench. When you change something on the fly, log the variation right there and it lands back on the laptop as a timestamped note on that method.
Following a protocol at the bench off a laptop screen is awkward. The screen is across the room, the text is small, and your hands are busy. The Methods tab puts your entire library on the phone, sized to read at arm's length. And because real protocols drift, you ran the gel five minutes longer, you bumped the anneal temperature, the phone also lets you record that change without breaking stride.
Two paths to a method
Methods reach the phone in two ways, and both end up in the same big-text read mode.
The Methods tab (primary path)
The Methods tab is the method library for the phone. It shows all your methods with search, type filter chips, and a sort toggle (by Type, A to Z, or Recent). Tap any row to open that method in read mode.
- Offline download. The library is cached on the phone so read mode works at the bench with no signal. A status chip at the top of the tab shows the download state: "Download for offline", "Downloading", a count of cached methods when ready, or "Update available" when the laptop has newer versions. Tap the chip to start the first download or apply an update.
- Favorites. Tap the star icon on any row to save that method as a favorite. Favorites are stored locally on the phone.
- Active-experiment recommendations band. When the laptop has an open experiment, a sky-tinted card appears at the top of the library list (above search results) showing the methods attached to that experiment, with a live green dot. Tapping a recommendation opens the focused experiment's method projection from the laptop. This band is hidden when you are searching or filtering.
View method on phone (Notebook tab path)
On the laptop, open the experiment and go to its Method tab.
Press View method on phone. This button appears when a phone is paired, so it shows up exactly when it can do something.
The laptop publishes a sealed, read-only projection of the method, and the phone renders it large and scrollable for the bench.
The View method on phone button also appears on the Notebook tab, giving you a shortcut to the focused experiment's method without needing to navigate to it first on the laptop.
It reads every method type
The phone renders whichever kind of method the experiment uses, so a structured protocol stays structured rather than collapsing into a wall of text. That covers a PCR program with its thermal steps, an LC-MS method, a compound method, and a plain Markdown protocol. The projection is read-only on the phone by design, so you are reading the canonical method, not editing it from a small screen.
Log a variation from the bench
When you deviate from the written method, tap Add a variation and describe what you actually did. The phone posts that back to the laptop, where it lands as a timestamped variation note on that experiment's method. You capture the real conditions in the moment they happen, instead of trying to reconstruct them from memory later, and the method itself stays intact with the variation recorded against it.