Preferences¶
The Preferences dialog collects the editor's settings into categories. Built-in pages include General (with the file backup section), Shortcuts (rebind any command's keyboard shortcut), Syntax Colouring, Auto-Completion, Smart Highlight, File Associations, Printing (colours, line numbers, header and footer, page setup), AI Assistant (whether a whole document is sent without asking, file edits by the engine) and Plugins (enable/disable installed plugins). Plugins contribute their own settings pages, which appear alongside the built-in ones — for example Theme Editor, Indentation, and Document Statistics.
Editor font¶
General ▸ Editor font / Font size sets the monospaced font every editor view renders text in — including split panes, the minimap and syntax-coloured files (themes only colour text; they never change the font). The list offers fixed-width families only. The default depends on the platform: Consolas on Windows, Menlo on macOS, DejaVu Sans Mono on Linux. If the configured family is not installed on this machine (for example a settings file carried over from another system), the editor falls back to the operating system's own fixed-width font, so text always lines up in columns. Changes apply to all open tabs as soon as you press Apply or OK; View ▸ Zoom scales the display on top of the configured size.
Window rendering¶
General ▸ Window rendering decides how the editor draws its own window:
| Mode | What it means |
|---|---|
| GPU (recommended) | The default. The window is composed through your graphics card from the moment it opens. |
| CPU | The window is composed by the processor instead. |
The reason the setting exists is the HTML preview: its browser engine has to be composed through the graphics card, and in CPU mode the window must be re-created to accommodate it — which makes the editor window flash once, the first time you open that preview. GPU avoids the flash, and is the mode to stay on. Switch to CPU only if the window itself misbehaves on your machine (drawn wrongly, or not at all).
The mode is fixed while the editor runs, so a change takes effect after a
restart — the page offers you one. If the window is already unusable and you
cannot reach Preferences, start the editor once with
--rendering=cpu
and set the option from there.
This setting is not carried by Settings Export / Import: whether GPU composition works is a property of the machine, not of your configuration.
Plugins¶
The Plugins page lists every plugin the editor found, loaded or not. The Status column says whether each one runs and, when it does not, why — so a plugin never just silently does nothing:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Enabled / Disabled | Your choice; a change applies after a restart. |
| Requires a license | A paid plugin that the current licence does not activate. |
| Needs plugin, which is not installed | The plugin depends on another plugin that is not installed. Install that one, or disable this one. |
| Needs plugin, which is disabled | The plugin it depends on is switched off. Enable it and restart. |
| Needs plugin, which requires a license | The plugin it depends on is a paid plugin the current licence does not activate. |
| Needs plugin, which did not load | The plugin it depends on is enabled but could not start — its own row says why. |
| Needs plugin, which needs this plugin in turn | The two plugins depend on each other, so neither can start. Report it to their authors. |
| Needs a newer version of OctoEdit | The plugin was built for a later version of the editor. Update the editor, or install a version of the plugin made for this one. |
| Incompatible (API mismatch) | The plugin was built for a different, incompatible version of the editor. |
A plugin that cannot run is shown greyed out. A plugin that others depend on is always started before them.
Note
Enabling or disabling a plugin applies on the next launch — the editor never loads or unloads plugin code while running.