Settings
The settings window is the one part of the app that behaves like a normal program. It takes no capture and it does not close itself.
Opening it
- Press the gear button on the capture overlay toolbar.
- Press the Settings button in the preview editor.
- Use the tray or menu bar icon, if you have the background helper on.
- Run the app with
--settings. - On Windows, use the Cosmic Capture Kit Settings shortcut in the Start Menu.
It also opens by itself, on the Screen Recordings tab, if you try to record and the app cannot find ffmpeg. That is not an error dialog, it is the app taking you to the page that explains the problem.
Only one settings window can exist at a time. Opening it again just brings the existing one forward.
Everything saves as you go
There is no Apply button and no OK button. The moment you flick a switch or type a number, it is saved. Closing the window is not a commit, and closing it without "saving" loses nothing. Theme changes appear immediately.
The pages
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| General | The tray helper, launching at login, and how the app looks |
| Capture Modes | Where captures are saved, the scanner, and how a screenshot is framed |
| Preview Editor | Whether the editor is a window or an overlay, what it does on exit, and covermark text |
| Audio & Video | Microphone and speakers, the cleanup chain, frame rate, quality and encoders |
| Keyboard Shortcuts | Every key the app listens for |
| Cloud Accounts | Connecting a drive to upload captures to |
| Health | What is working, what is missing, and debug logging |
| About | Version, updates and donating |
Four of those pages are split into tabs of their own. Tabs always start on the first one when you open the window.
Finding a setting
Press the magnifier in the header, or press Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on macOS. Type what you are after.
The search covers every page, not just the one you are looking at, and it groups what it finds under the name of the page it lives on. It matches on the name of a setting and on its description, and matching the name of a whole section keeps all of that section's settings together. If nothing matches you get "No matching settings."
One gap worth knowing: the settings on the Mixing tab of Audio & Video are not in the search index. Open that tab directly to find them.
Putting something back
One setting. Every row has a small reset icon at its right edge. It only lights up, and only does something, when that setting is not at its default. Its tooltip reads "Reset to default". A greyed icon means you have not changed anything there.
One page. Most pages have a Reset to defaults chip at the bottom. On the tabbed pages it resets only the tab you are looking at, and leaves the other tabs alone. It asks first: "Reset this page? This restores the settings on this page to their defaults. This cannot be undone."
About, Health and Cloud Accounts have no page reset, because they hold almost nothing to reset.
Everything. A Factory reset button sits at the bottom of the page list. It asks first too: "Factory reset? This restores every setting on every page to its default. This cannot be undone."
The page list
The list of pages on the left can be collapsed to icons with the hamburger button in the header. It also collapses on its own when you make the window narrow, and expands again when you widen it. The icons keep their tooltips either way.
The window remembers the size you left it at.