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Settings

File > Settings (or Ctrl+,) is a two-pane dialog, IntelliJ-style: a category list on the left (General, Appearance, Editor, Templates, History, Spell Check, Sync, Pomodoro, Shortcuts), Up/Down to move between categories, and that category’s controls on the right. Settings are stored as smaragd.toml in the platform’s config directory (the same base path as the global plugins, custom-themes, custom-styles, and custom-project-templates folders — see Plugins, Custom themes, Typesetting styles, and Project Templates). Writing Streak is not here — it’s configured per project, inside its own dock tab (see Writing Streak); other per-project settings (git auto-commit, syncing non-Markdown files, binder coloring) live in their own dialog — see Project Settings.

  • General: Reopen project on launch (off by default; restores the open document, cursor, binder state and window too — see Projects), Ensure Research and Trash folders exist in every project (off by default; see Projects), and a Notifications section with Error toast duration and Status bar message duration (1–60 seconds each, defaulting to 6 and 8 respectively — see Notifications above)
  • Appearance: Dark/Light/System and Color Theme (see Themes), a UI font picker (see Editor Font), UI Scale — a manual multiplier (50%–300%, default 100%) on top of whatever scaling your OS/display server already reports, for the rare case that comes back wrong (some Wayland compositors don’t report a scale winit picks up, leaving the whole UI tiny with no apparent way to fix it; takes effect immediately, Reset clears it back to 100%) — and Show document stats in binder (off by default; see The Binder)
  • Editor: font + size (see Editor Font), Typewriter quotes in Preview and export (off by default; see Typewriter Quotes), Show line numbers (off by default; see Writing and the Editor), and Allow multiple documents open at once (off by default; see Writing and the Editor)
  • Templates: date format for ${{date}} — see Template Variables
  • Spell Check: a Language dropdown (off by default), an In Focus Mode dropdown (keep current, on or off) and a Dictionaries list to download the ones you want to use — see Spell Check
  • History: an app-wide “Enable Git integration” switch and a multi-line commit message template with a placeholder quick-reference and live preview (see Git Integration), and a Backups section (see Backups) — Scrivener-style automatic zipped snapshots of the whole project, off by default. A master “Enable automatic backups” switch, plus independent triggers for opening a project, closing a project, and every explicit save, a backups to keep count, and a backup folder (defaulting to the platform’s data directory, browsable to somewhere else)
  • Sync (experimental): the on/off switch for Sync, the sync server’s Host, Port, Path and Use HTTPS settings, your end-to-end encryption Passphrase (masked; the same on every device, stored in plain text in the settings file, which only your user account can read, and not recoverable if lost; at least 12 characters to create a vault), this device’s Name, and a Test Connection button. Pairing a project with a vault is done from the Sync panel, not here.
  • Pomodoro: durations (work/short break/long break minutes, and sessions before a long break), plus a desktop-notification toggle for automatic phase completions — see Pomodoro Timer
  • Shortcuts: remap or unbind any action, including a fullscreen toggle

If the settings file is missing or its contents can’t be parsed, smaragd falls back to defaults rather than failing to start.