New Chat from the Home Screen

New Chat starts a fresh Chat Mode conversation in one step from your Home Screen. Waycar opens straight into the chat with the keyboard up, so you can start typing.

Start a New Chat

1. On the Home Screen, touch and hold the Waycar icon.
2. Tap New Chat.
3. Type your first message.

By default, the chat starts where your last chat was: the same Host, Workspace and agent.

Choose where New Chat starts

1. Open Settings › Chat Mode.
2. Under New Chat, pick the Host and the Agent. Once you pick a Host, you can also pick its Workspace. Until the Host connects, the Workspace row reads Connect to change; a connected Host with none reads No workspaces yet.

Host and Agent can each be Last Used, which follows your most recent chat, or a fixed choice. The Agent can be Claude Code, Codex, omp, pi or opencode.

The chat uses the rest of your Chat Mode settings too: the Chat Prompt, each agent’s model, and Quick thinking. Line breaks in the Chat Prompt are sent as spaces. See Chat Mode.

What if it can’t start right away?

• If the Workspace you picked is gone, Waycar makes it again in its folder.
• If the Host you picked was removed, New Chat goes back to Last Used.
• Disabled Hosts aren’t offered. A choice saved on a Host you later disable reads as Last Used, and comes back when you turn the Host on again.
• If your choices can’t be used, or the Host isn’t ready within 20 seconds, the New Chat sheet opens with Chat Mode already on, so you can pick and tap Start.
• With no Hosts set up, New Chat opens Waycar.

Good to know

• A New Chat is a new agent, so it counts as one Launch. See Waycar Pro and Launches.
• Before your first chat on a Host, run the install command there so it has the latest Waycar plugin.