Motion & Polish (the app's visual flourishes)

What it is

Settings → Appearance → Motion & Polish. A master switch plus per-effect toggles for Omniscio's visual flourishes. Everything is ON by default since 2026-07-16 — the polish is part of the first impression. The safety levers are unchanged: turning the master OFF still kills every effect at once, a user's explicit opt-out (master or per-effect) is never overridden, and all motion auto-quiets under the OS "reduce motion" setting and Omniscio's Low-Power mode. (Before 2026-07-16 the master defaulted off and only the "Liveliness" tier lit up with it; the flip unified everything to default-on.)

Mirrors the Chat Depth dial's plumbing: settings → Zod → a data-polish-* attribute on <html> → gated CSS (or a component-level gate for motion that CSS can't express). Engineering invariants + the tests that lock them: motion-polish-contract.md.

Where to find it

Settings → Appearance → Motion & Polish — the master switch and the per-effect toggles behind it.

How it behaves

How gating works

• motionPolishEnabled (master, default on) gates EVERYTHING. An explicit master-off renders nothing — the one-switch kill.
• Each effect has its own boolean, all default on (?? true at the gate mirrors the Zod .default(true), so a config that predates a key still gets the polished default; an explicit per-effect false survives independently).
• The pure helper computePolishAttributes(settings) (src/renderer/src/lib/motion-polish.ts) is the single source of truth; isPolishEffectOn(settings, effect) is its boolean form for component wiring. Both window roots (main + detached) apply the attributes.
• Persistent-mode effects use a data-polish-* attribute; transient/one-shot effects (Inbox Zero) gate via isPolishEffectOn in a hook (an attribute can't represent a one-shot event).
• Settings persist as DELTAS, so the default flip reaches every install that never touched the toggles; only a persisted false keeps an effect off.

The effects (all default on under the master)

Toggle	What it does
Interactive surfaces (polishInteractive)	Buttons lift with a soft tinted shadow on hover.
Dashboard motion (polishDashboard)	Insights (codebase-stats) numbers count up from zero, and the stat cards cascade in when the panel opens.
Ambient backgrounds (polishAmbient)	A slow drifting accent gradient behind the big welcome ("No session selected") and "All clear" inbox screens.
Depth & elevation (polishDepth)	Panels and cards lift with a soft shadow.
View crossfades (polishViewCrossfade)	The Dashboard fades instead of hard-swapping on view change.
Glide on reorder (polishGlideReorder)	Needs-You / Pinned sidebar rows slide into place and their sections collapse smoothly, so everything below (including the "Live Sessions" divider) re-settles in sync instead of snapping when the list re-sorts.
Inbox Zero celebration (polishInboxZero)	A calm "you're all caught up" moment (soft glow + self-drawing check) when you clear the last inbox item.

Related: the always-on butter layer (not toggles)

Separate from these toggles, a base layer of one-shot interaction feedback is always on (like the dialog entrance): the segmented-control active pill glides between options, inbox rows fade in on arrival and height-collapse on dismiss, button loading spinners fade in, and count badges pop once when their number changes. Same safety rules (one-shot, reduced-motion + low-power kills); detail: buttery-microinteractions-contract.md.

Notes

• Accessibility / performance: every animated effect is killed by BOTH prefers-reduced-motion and html.low-power; effects animate transform/opacity only (60fps) and stay off the performance-critical chat-bubble surface (owned by Chat Depth) and the virtualized session list.
• Adding a new effect: follow the end-to-end chain in the contract (type + default → Zod → gate → both app roots → CSS/component → settings toggle → search keywords → npm run settings:catalog). A missing link = a dead toggle.
• History: motion-polish-toggles-postmortem.md.

Related

• chat-depth.md — the sibling appearance dial whose plumbing this mirrors.
• low-power-mode.md — the mode that quiets every animated effect.
• perf-status.md — what the app does when the machine is under load.