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Settings

φ keeps its settings in one place, grouped so you rarely have to hunt. Open Settings with ⌘, (or Preferences… in the app menu). A column on the left lists the categories; pick one and its options appear on the right.

The categories are Appearance, Editor, Profiles, Versioning, Vault, Templates, and Data.

Most settings apply to the whole app and take effect immediately. The exception is Versioning, which is configured per vault — see below.

Appearance​

How φ looks: light or dark, how large the interface is, which color theme it uses, and what language it speaks. Color themes and languages have their own page — see Themes & languages.

Theme​

  • Appearance — choose System, Light, or Dark. System follows your Mac's setting and switches with it.
  • Interface size — scales the whole UI, including icons, between 100%, 115%, 130%, and 150%. Use this if the app feels too small (or too large) on your display.
  • Week starts on — whether the calendar and heatmap begin the week on Monday or Sunday.

Color theme​

A list of installed color themes. The built-in Phi theme is marked Official; community themes you install appear below it and can be removed with the trash icon. Install theme… adds a theme JSON file, and Open themes folder reveals where they live. Full details on the Themes & languages page.

Language​

The Interface language of the app. Built-in languages are English, Spanish, and French; System default follows your Mac. You can Install a language… (a community translation file), Export English template… to start your own, and Open folder to see where languages are kept. Missing translations fall back to English.

  • Show recent documents — show or hide the Recent section at the top of the file sidebar.

Editor​

Everything about the writing surface itself.

Writing​

  • Body font — the typeface for your text, grouped into Serif, Sans, and Mono. Bundled fonts embed in EPUB exports; system fonts are marked.
  • Font size — editor body text, from 14 to 26 px. Reset returns it to the default.
  • Line height — the space between lines, from 1.3 to 2.2. Reset returns it to the default.
  • Focus typing — dim everything but the line you're on: Off, Sentence, or Paragraph.
  • Typewriter scrolling — keep the caret vertically centered as you type.
  • Date format — how dates display across the app. The stored day never changes; this only affects how it's shown. Choosing Custom reveals a Custom pattern field that uses date-fns tokens (yyyy, MMM, d, EEEE…), with today's date shown as a live preview.

Writing streak​

  • Minimum words / day — a day counts toward your writing streak once you write this many words. The minimum is 50.

Code​

For code blocks.

  • Indent using — Spaces or Tabs.
  • Indent width — spaces per indent (and the display width of a tab), 1 to 8. 2 and 4 are common.

Versions & import​

  • Version diff detail — how precisely changes are highlighted when you preview a version: by Word or by Character.
  • Imported images — when you bring in an image, either Copy to vault (into the vault's assets/ folder) or keep it Inline as a data URI (self-contained, but larger documents).

Dictionary & Thesaurus​

Install and manage offline dictionary packs. This section has its own page — see Dictionary & thesaurus.

Profiles​

Choose which features φ shows, per vault, with a writer profile — Simple (just the page) or Full (every tool), plus any custom profiles you save. This is also where you pick your Streak display (Motivational / Quiet / Off) and a Weekly rhythm goal. Hiding a feature never deletes anything. This section has its own page — see Writer profiles.

Versioning​

These settings apply to the active vault. Each vault is its own repository with its own backend, remote, and identity — so the name of the vault you're configuring is shown at the top.

Backend​

Choose how history is kept:

  • Native — local snapshots, no git required. This is the default.
  • Git — full git history plus optional remote backup. Available only when git is installed on your computer.

Switching to git is a power-user step: φ runs git init in the vault, commits automatically on a schedule, and migrates your existing native history into git. A confirmation dialog spells out the caveats first. Once a vault is a git repository, φ keeps it on git; to go back to native you remove the .git folder yourself.

History​

  • Auto-checkpoint every — how often edits are committed as an automatic version. Set a number of minutes, pick a preset (1 / 5 / 10 / 30), or turn it Off. Manual snapshots and on-close saves are unaffected.
  • Local history limit (native only) — the maximum number of versions kept per document. Older snapshots are pruned to bound disk use. Install git for unlimited history.

Git backup (git backend only)​

When a vault uses git, you can also configure how φ commits and where it backs up:

  • Commit name / Commit email — the identity φ commits as. Leave blank to use your machine's git user. A dedicated email keeps this work off your main GitHub graph.
  • SSH key path — the private key φ uses to push (for example ~/.ssh/id_ed25519). The key file must be chmod 600.
  • Backup remote URL — the GitHub/GitLab/… remote to push to. Blank uses the repo's existing origin.
  • Auto-push backups — push new commits to the remote on a regular interval. When on, set Push every (minutes).
  • Sign commits — cryptographically sign commits so they show as Verified. Choose a Signing method (SSH or GPG) and a Signing key.
  • Backup now — push immediately with Push now. The hint tells you whether you're up to date, have unpushed commits, or have no remote yet.

For more on versions and backup, see Versions & backup.

Vault​

About the vault you're working in.

  • Active vault — the current vault's name and folder path.
  • Manage — Open vault… and Create vault… to switch or add vaults, and Remove vault… to drop the active vault from φ. Removing a vault only forgets it; your files on disk are untouched.

See Vaults for the full picture.

Templates​

Reusable snippets with variables. This section lists your vault templates (specific to the active vault) and global templates (available everywhere). Edit one with the pencil icon or remove it with the trash icon. Install a template… adds a template file, and Open folder reveals where global templates are stored.

See Templates for how variables work.

Data​

The health of your .poiesis files, migration backups, and a settings reset.

Vault health​

φ checks whether your documents are on the current schema. When everything is up to date, it says so (with the schema and document versions). If some documents use an older schema, Migrate all notes updates them — and a backup is saved automatically before any document is migrated.

Backups​

Appears once a migration has run. Shows how many backup files exist and their total size. Open backups folder reveals them; Clear old backups removes older ones.

Reset​

Reset all settings… restores every app setting — theme, editor, layout, dates, and so on — to its factory default. Your notes, vaults, and writing records are not affected.