Settings (opening it, and getting where you were going)

What it is

What it is

Settings is the central place to change how Omniscio behaves — accounts, channels (Gmail/SMS/Slack/etc.), notifications, sessions, keybindings, appearance, voice, and dozens of other knobs. There is no separate "preferences" window; settings open inside the same Omniscio window as your sessions.

There are four ways to open settings, and all four render the same Settings UI:

1. The gear icon on the right side of the toolbar (top of the window).
2. The Settings entry in the Omniscio group at the bottom of the projects sidebar — this is a "virtual project," meaning it lives in the same column as your real projects but its content is the Settings UI rather than a session list.
3. The tools menu on the mobile tab bar (a grid icon ▦, on small viewports) — it opens a header menu (a dropdown of header tools), and Settings is one of its rows. (It is deliberately not a gear — a gear made the menu look identical to the old Settings button.)
4. The accounts menu on the mobile tab bar (the scale icon ⚖ at the right end) — its Settings row opens Settings, and Manage Accounts opens it straight at the Accounts section.

On a phone, either menu's Settings row works from any screen: it closes a full-screen page such as Recipes first, and the phone's Back gesture then returns to the hubs list.

The first time you open Settings in an app session it lands on the Home page — a pinned overview at the top of the section list with a large search box, popular-setting tiles, your recently-changed settings, a "Changed from default" list with one-click Reset, and browse-all cards for every group (see settings-home.md). Reopening Settings later in the same app session returns to whatever section you last visited, and a deep link (a toast's "open settings" button, a right-click → setting, a search hit) always goes straight to its target — Home never hijacks those.

Beyond Home you'll see a section list on the left (Accounts, Appearance, System, Notifications, Sessions, Keyboard Shortcuts, Connected Tools, channels like Gmail/SMS/Slack, etc.) and the chosen section's content on the right. A search box lets you type to find a specific setting by name — it sits at the top of the sidebar on every section, and moves into the Home page's hero while Home is active (same search, same results, just front-and-center). Clicking a result jumps to its section and scrolls to the exact toggle. You can also type a category name (e.g. "Performance", "Appearance") to surface that whole category as a top result; selecting it opens that section. Results are ordered by how on-target the match is: a section (category) name match comes first, then a setting whose name matches, then matches found only in a setting's keywords or description — and a close typo of a name still counts as a name match, so a misspelling doesn't sink the setting you meant. Inside the search results you can navigate with the keyboard: ArrowDown / ArrowUp move the highlighted result, Enter opens the highlighted one, and the highlight wraps from the last back to the first.

There are four ways to leave Settings, and they all return you to whatever you were looking at before you opened Settings (a specific session, an inbox view, the Recipes pane, etc.):

1. The × button in the top-right of the Settings sidebar (top-right of the mobile section header on mobile).
2. The Esc key while Settings is focused and you're not typing into an input/textarea or inside an open dialog/menu.
3. The gear icon in the desktop toolbar — clicking it again toggles Settings closed. (On mobile the tools-menu icon opens the header menu rather than toggling Settings, so leave Settings via the × button, Esc, or by tapping another tab.)
4. Clicking any project in the projects sidebar, or any other Omniscio sidebar entry (Inbox, Recipes, Tools, etc.).

Settings is non-destructive — closing it keeps your changes; Omniscio saves on every toggle. There's nothing to "save" or "apply" — most changes are live. A few (like Error Reporting and GPU acceleration) require a restart, and Settings tells you when that's the case.

Where to find it

The gear icon at the top-right of the window on desktop; the same Settings surface is reachable from the mobile navigation and from a session's own menus. The gear glows while you are inside Settings.

How it behaves

How to use it

1. To open via the gear icon (desktop default). Look at the top-right of the window for a small gear (Settings icon). Click it. The view switches to Settings; the gear glows in the accent color while you're inside Settings. Click the gear again to toggle Settings closed (returns you to whatever you were viewing before), or use the × button in the Settings sidebar's top-right, Esc, or any project in the sidebar to leave.
2. To open via the Omniscio sidebar entry. Scroll the Projects sidebar (leftmost column) to the bottom. There's a group labeled Omniscio containing built-in views like Inbox, Recipes, Tools, and Settings (gear icon). Click Settings to switch to the Settings view. This entry is a "virtual project" — same UI, same data, just a different way in.
3. To open via the mobile tab bar. On a phone or narrow window, the tab bar shows Inbox, Projects, and a tools menu (a grid icon ▦, not a gear). Tap it to open the header menu — a dropdown of the phone-appropriate header tools (Recipes, Bookmarks, Super Prompts, Focus Mode, Help, Mind Map/Whiteboard when enabled, Mute, Feedback, …) — then tap Settings.
4. Pick a section. The Settings sidebar lists every section: Accounts (Claude logins / API keys), Appearance (theme, accent color, sidebar density, branch-in-header toggle), System (default projects folder, global hotkey, data retention, error reporting, launch on startup), Notifications (sounds, silence, mobile push), Sessions (Submit key, post-send navigation, draft behavior), Keyboard Shortcuts (rebind every keyboard shortcut), Connected Tools (install/check Claude Code + helper CLIs), Voice, Workflow, Automations, Recipes, Plugins, and channel-specific sections for Gmail / SMS / Slack / GitHub / RSS / Webhooks / Calendar / Drive / Sheets / Email Inbound. Click a section to load its content.
5. Search instead of scrolling. The search box at the top of the Settings sidebar accepts free text — type "submit" and you'll get Submit key under Sessions; type "tray" and you'll get nothing (that one isn't surfaced); type "branch" and you'll get Show current git branch in header under Appearance. Click the result — or press Enter while it's highlighted (use ArrowDown / ArrowUp to change the highlight) — to jump to the section and the matching control.
6. Two open Settings views are independent. If you open the gear icon while you're already inside the Omniscio → Settings entry (or vice versa), you have two <Settings /> instances. Each one tracks its own active section and search query — picking a section in one does not change the other. The underlying settings store stays consistent, so any toggle you flip is reflected everywhere immediately.
7. A few deep-link entry points only work via the gear icon. Some flows (the "Run Tour" buttons inside Setup Wizards, automation pre-fill from a deep link) thread callbacks through App.tsx props that only reach the gear-icon entry. If a "Run Tour" button is inert, you opened Settings via the Omniscio sidebar — close it and use the gear icon instead. See settings-virtual-project.md for the full v1 limitation list.

There is currently no default keyboard shortcut bound to "Open Settings." If you want one, open Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts, find an unbound keybinding for one of the existing actions, or change the Global Hotkey in System (which only restores the Omniscio window from the tray — it doesn't open Settings directly).

For agents

How it works

The gear icon is the settings toolbar item — defined in src/renderer/src/features/toolbar/toolbar-items.ts and rendered by src/renderer/src/features/toolbar/ToolbarPinnedItem.tsx case 'settings'. Its onClick calls the onOpenSettings prop, which App.tsx wires into handleToolbarAction case 'settings': if the Settings virtual project is currently active, it calls closeSettings(); otherwise it calls openSettingsFromToolbar(). On mobile the trigger is in src/renderer/src/components/ui/MobileTabBar.tsx — a distinct tools/menu glyph (LayoutGrid), NOT the Settings gear (the gear made the menu look identical to the old direct-to-Settings button) — and opens the src/renderer/src/components/ui/MobileHeaderMenu.tsx dropdown (which surfaces the desktop header tools that are otherwise hidden on mobile); its Settings row calls navigateToSettingsProject() — the same Settings view. See mobile-header-menu-contract.md. Settings is a pinned-by-default toolbar item (see DEFAULT_PINNED_TOOLBAR_ITEMS in src/renderer/src/features/toolbar/toolbar-items.ts).

The Close Settings affordance lives in src/renderer/src/features/settings/Settings.tsx: an optional onClose prop, when provided, renders a top-right × button in the desktop sidebar, the mobile section header (next to the existing ← back-to-menu button), and the mobile main header. A useEffect binds Esc on document and calls onClose(), skipping when the focused element is an <input>/<textarea>/contenteditable, when event.defaultPrevented is true, or when the target is inside a [role="dialog"]/[role="menu"]/[role="listbox"] so open dialogs/menus get first crack at Esc.

src/renderer/src/integrations/SettingsPanelAdapter.tsx bridges the standalone <Settings /> into the Dashboard integration registry and wires onClose to closeSettings() from src/renderer/src/lib/close-settings.ts. That helper is a 9-line wrapper around toggleSettingsFromToolbar(() => undefined) from src/renderer/src/lib/toggle-settings-from-toolbar.ts — the same helper the toolbar gear uses — so all three programmatic exits (X button, Esc, gear) share one navigate-away path. The helper reads the existing previousPosition: { projectId, sessionId } | null slice on src/renderer/src/stores/session-store.ts (already maintained for Alt+Q toggleInbox and other navigation toggles): if previousPosition is set, restore that project/session and re-stash the pre-toggle Settings position; if null (cold start, deep-link), fall back to INBOX_ID. No new state was added for this feature — exit re-uses the slice entry already pays for.

The Omniscio sidebar entry is registered as a virtual project named "Settings" with the sentinel SETTINGS_PROJECT_ID from src/shared/types.ts; registration happens at startup in src/main/index.ts via ensureVirtualProject('Settings', SETTINGS_PROJECT_ID). The Dashboard renders a lazy-loaded <Settings /> (via LazySettingsView) when the active project's id matches the sentinel — see the isSettingsSelected branch in src/renderer/src/features/dashboard/Dashboard.tsx. Both entry points mount the same <Settings /> component from src/renderer/src/features/settings/Settings.tsx, which holds the section list, search index (src/renderer/src/features/settings/settings-search-index.ts), and the right-pane content router. The 50-section list lives in VALID_SECTIONS near the top of Settings.tsx.

Related

Related

• settings-home.md — the Home landing page: popular tiles, recently changed, changed-from-default with Reset
• settings-virtual-project.md — the architecture: why two entries exist, what doesn't reach the Omniscio entry yet
• keyboard-shortcuts.md — every default shortcut and how to rebind it (Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts)
• tray-and-window.md — closing the window vs hiding to tray, and the global hotkey that restores the window
• add-a-claude-account.md — Settings → Accounts is where you add your first Claude login