diff --git a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml
index 803b371..0f3ecb0 100644
--- a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml
+++ b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml
@@ -29,18 +29,23 @@
       <TextBlock x:Name="Line" Classes="hint" Text="Starting…" />
 
       <!--
-        Indeterminate, because there is nothing honest to measure. Composition opens a SQLite file, binds a
-        loopback socket, asks the platform about a TPM and reads an install layout off disk; none of them
-        reports progress and inventing a bar that crawled to 90% and waited would be a worse lie than a bar
-        that only says "still going".
+        ── AND NO PROGRESS BAR, WHICH IS A REMOVAL RATHER THAN AN OMISSION ─────────────────────────────────
 
-        Four pixels, matching the update banner's own and the transfers screen's, so the one moving thing in
-        this application looks like itself wherever it appears.
+        There was an indeterminate one here, and on screen it did not move. The reason is the same fact this
+        whole window exists for: composition is a synchronous block, and DodoSshApp posts it to the very
+        dispatcher that would have to animate the bar. Background priority buys the splash its first paint
+        and nothing after it — once composition starts, the UI thread is inside it until the main window is
+        ready, and an indeterminate bar's animation is driven by that thread's clock. So it painted one
+        frame and froze.
+
+        A frozen indeterminate bar does not read as "indeterminate". It reads as a determinate bar stuck at
+        zero, which is the one thing worse than no bar at all: it says the work has stalled at the exact
+        moment the application is busiest. Nothing here can honestly be measured either — a SQLite open, a
+        loopback bind, a TPM probe and an install-layout read report no progress between them.
+
+        So the line above is the whole of it. "Starting…" is true for as long as it is on screen, it needs
+        no clock to stay true, and the window closing is what says it finished.
       -->
-      <ProgressBar x:Name="Bar" Height="4" Margin="0,4,0,0"
-                   IsIndeterminate="True"
-                   Foreground="{StaticResource Accent}"
-                   Background="{StaticResource Chip}" />
 
     </StackPanel>
 
diff --git a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml.cs b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml.cs
index de29d6f..9e39cb6 100644
--- a/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml.cs
+++ b/src/DodoSSH.Client.App/Views/SplashCard.axaml.cs
@@ -19,14 +19,11 @@ internal sealed partial class SplashCard : UserControl
     /// Says why nothing is going to happen, and stops pretending otherwise.
     /// </summary>
     /// <remarks>
-    /// The bar stopping is half the message. A composition that threw leaves this window as the only one
-    /// there is — there is no main window to hand over to — so an indeterminate bar would go on saying
-    /// "still going" over a process that has stopped, which is the one thing a splash must never do.
+    /// The line is the whole message now that the progress bar has gone — see the markup for why it went.
+    /// It used to have to stop the bar as well: a composition that threw leaves this window as the only one
+    /// there is, with no main window to hand over to, so anything still claiming to be working would be
+    /// doing it over a process that has stopped. One assignment says it instead, and there is nothing left
+    /// on this card that could contradict it.
     /// </remarks>
-    internal void CouldNotStart(string why)
-    {
-        Line.Text = why;
-        Bar.IsIndeterminate = false;
-        Bar.Value = 0;
-    }
+    internal void CouldNotStart(string why) => Line.Text = why;
 }