diff --git a/src/pages/index.astro b/src/pages/index.astro
index 54eda96..4f0964f 100644
--- a/src/pages/index.astro
+++ b/src/pages/index.astro
@@ -15,10 +15,12 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
          hand those 120px to the page, so no element and no viewport unit reaches them —
          see the note on .ambient for what actually resolves it. -->
     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
-    <!-- Not --paper. Safari paints its overscroll regions with this flat colour, but
-         the page underneath is the ambient field, which lifts the edges well off paper.
-         Measured off rendered pixels at the top and bottom edges. -->
-    <meta name="theme-color" content="#0f1813" />
+    <!-- --paper, and it has to stay --paper: this is one of the surfaces Safari fills
+         around the page, alongside the canvas, and the field is now brought to --paper
+         at the viewport edges so all of them agree. A "better matching" value here is
+         precisely the bug — it reintroduces a colour that differs from the page edge,
+         which surfaces as a bar whenever Safari switches to it during a scroll. -->
+    <meta name="theme-color" content="#0a100c" />
     <meta name="generator" content={Astro.generator} />
     <title>{title}</title>
     <meta name="description" content={description} />
@@ -175,10 +177,10 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
     right: 0;
     left: 0;
     /* Deliberately not inset: 0. A fixed box pinned to the bottom stops at the small
-       viewport, but iOS Safari keeps rendering the page behind its translucent
-       toolbar — so the strip between svh and lvh fell back to flat paper and read as
-       a grey bar under the chrome. Sized to the large viewport, the field paints
-       through the toolbar instead. */
+       viewport, leaving the strip between svh and lvh unpainted by this layer — which
+       matters because the toolbar retracts and hands those pixels back to the page.
+       Sized to the large viewport, the layer owns them in both states; what it puts
+       there is the ::after note's business. */
     height: 100%;
     height: 100lvh;
     overflow: hidden;
@@ -194,23 +196,55 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
      and no viewport-fit=cover reaches them; earlier attempts only moved the seam.
 
      So the canvas is the single point, and there is exactly one thing to get right:
-     the canvas colour and the page's own edge colour have to be equal. The canvas can
-     only be flat --paper, and the field is a moving light whose edge tone drifts, so
-     matching by picking a constant is a value that is wrong again as soon as the bands
-     move. Instead the field is brought to zero at the bottom of the viewport — then
-     page edge, canvas and theme-color are all --paper by construction, whatever the
-     animation is doing, and the seam cannot come back.
+     every surface Safari fills around the page, and the page's own colour where it
+     meets them, must be the same paint. Those surfaces can only be flat colours, and
+     the field is a moving light whose edge tone drifts, so matching them by picking a
+     constant is a value that is wrong again as soon as the bands move — and wrong in a
+     different way in each scroll state, which is what made the bar come and go.
 
-     Costs nothing to look at: this falls inside the strip Safari's toolbar already
-     covers. Static, so the layer still composites without repainting per frame. */
+     The field is therefore brought to zero at both edges of the viewport. --paper is
+     then the only colour in play: canvas, theme-color, overscroll, the chrome strips,
+     and the page itself where it touches any of them. There is no second value left
+     for Safari to swap in, so no scroll state, toolbar collapse or fixed-layer
+     reposition has anything to expose. That is the property to preserve — if this ever
+     needs editing, keep the edges at --paper rather than tuning a colour to match.
+
+     The one thing that has to be right is where the bottom reaches --paper, and it is
+     not a number to taste. This layer is fixed and 100lvh tall, but the bottom edge of
+     what the reader can see is only at 100lvh with the toolbar collapsed; expanded, it
+     is at 100svh, ~100px higher, and Safari slides between the two mid-scroll. Ending
+     the fade at the element's own bottom therefore left the visible edge sitting part
+     way up the fade whenever the toolbar was out — lighter than the strip below it, so
+     the bar came back — and clean again once the toolbar went away. A boundary at a
+     coordinate that moves is not a fix, it is the same bug relocated.
+
+     Nor can that band simply be held flat: those pixels are behind the chrome in one
+     state and are ordinary page in the other, so a flat patch there is invisible with
+     the toolbar out and a hard-edged band the moment it retracts. Both failures are
+     the same failure — an edge existing anywhere the viewport boundary can land.
+
+     So there is no edge. The field decays to --paper continuously, and is already
+     exactly --paper by 100svh, above the highest position the visible bottom can take;
+     everything from there to 100lvh is the same paint. Every boundary the viewport
+     could land on is gone, in either state and part way through the transition between
+     them. The decay is spread over ~14rem because the whole excursion is about five
+     steps of RGB — under a step per 40px, below anything the eye reads as an edge, and
+     the grain dithers the remainder. Keep that shape if this is ever edited: reach
+     --paper at or before 100svh, and get there gradually. Top edge likewise, though it
+     is simpler — the layout viewport's top does not move, so it only needs to arrive.
+     Static, so the layer still composites without repainting per frame. */
   .ambient::after {
     content: '';
     position: absolute;
-    right: 0;
-    bottom: 0;
-    left: 0;
-    height: 5rem;
-    background: linear-gradient(to top, var(--paper), rgb(10 16 12 / 0%));
+    inset: 0;
+    background: linear-gradient(
+      to bottom,
+      var(--paper) 0,
+      rgb(10 16 12 / 0%) 8rem,
+      rgb(10 16 12 / 0%) calc(100svh - 14rem),
+      var(--paper) 100svh,
+      var(--paper) 100%
+    );
   }
 
   /* Oversized so the bands can travel a long way without an edge ever entering the
@@ -679,14 +713,28 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
      which lands on load and leaves it plainly visible. */
   @supports (animation-timeline: view()) {
     @media (max-width: 720px) {
+      /* Where the reveal runs, the footer is transparent until it is scrolled to, so
+         opacity is what hides it and the layout no longer has to. That buys back both
+         halves of the drop the fallback needs: the toolbar term goes, because a footer
+         behind Safari's bar cannot show through it at zero alpha, and the clearance
+         shrinks to the little that keeps the rule from being mid-fade at rest. All of
+         it was scroll the reader had to spend before anything began to happen. */
+      .page-shell {
+        --footer-drop: clamp(4.75rem, 9.3vh, 5.1rem);
+      }
+
       .footer {
         opacity: 0;
         animation: footer-reveal linear both;
         animation-timeline: view();
-        /* Finishes at 88% rather than 100%: the last stretch of "entry" is the
-           element clearing Safari's translucent toolbar, and waiting that long
-           means it is still fading while it looks fully on screen. */
-        animation-range: entry 12% entry 88%;
+        /* "entry" opens before the footer's edge reaches the fold, not at it: parked,
+           it already measures 9-11% entered across phone sizes. So the start has to be
+           past that or the footer sits permanently part-faded at rest — 20% clears it
+           on every size tested with room to spare, and still begins the reveal within
+           the first few pixels of scroll. Ending at 45% means it reads as arrived at
+           roughly a third of the travel, instead of still fading while it already
+           looks fully on screen. */
+        animation-range: entry 20% entry 45%;
       }
     }
   }