Settings and Customization

Now we'll move to making the app yours. The Settings window has four tabs — Pens, Shortcuts, General and Backups. Open it from the Cocoa menu › Settings…, or with Command-comma. This chapter goes tab by tab, then covers the customizations that live elsewhere: a folder's own pens, paper defaults, and the panes you can hide.

Pens

These are the pens every folder uses unless it has its own set (chapter 6). Two ship with the app: Highlight, the plain yellow pen, and Important, in red. Each row ①, left to right:

• The color swatch and Name field. The name is what appears in the Marks menu, the pen tray, Collections and the AI prompts.
• The color menu: Yellow, Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Orange, Pink, Teal.
• The treatment menu — how a mark looks besides its color: Color only, Margin bracket, Dotted underline, ! in the margin, ? in the margin.
• The render style menu — how the pen's collection reads: Cards (one row per mark) or Continuous prose (the marks run together as text).
• Collects (a tray icon) — whether marks made with this pen gather into a collection.
• Makes study cards (a graduation cap) — whether they become recall cards.
• Delete (a minus in a circle). The alert asks Delete Formulas? and offers Delete Pen, Keep Highlights: text already marked keeps its highlight and shows as an unknown pen until you make a pen with that name again.

Add Pen ② is a menu of suggested pens — Formulas (green), Definitions (blue), Examples (purple), On the Exam (orange), Unclear (pink), Quotes (teal) and Summary (yellow, rendered as continuous prose) — plus a blank pen to name yourself; when every suggestion is installed it reads All suggested pens added. Drag rows to reorder them; the order sets the shortcuts ⌃1 to ⌃9 ③.

Shortcuts

Every command in the app is listed here with its shortcut on the right, in groups: Document, Format, Editing, View, Navigation, Find, Marks and Window. Click a shortcut to change it: the label reads Press a key…; press the new combination. A shortcut you have changed is tinted and gets a small back-arrow to reset it alone. Restore Defaults appears in the bottom strip while any change exists.

The strip also reports conflicts: No conflicts. with a checkmark, or 2 conflicting shortcuts. in orange when two commands share a combination. If you record a combination macOS keeps for itself — Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, Undo, Redo, Quit, Minimize, Hide, Command-comma, or the screenshot keys — it is refused in red: belongs to macOS. It would never reach Cocoa.

The read-only version of this list is Keyboard Shortcuts (⌘/): a filterable sheet you can read mid-sentence.

General

• Quick Capture › Global shortcut — the key that opens the capture panel from any app. Default ⌥Space. Click the recorder and press a new combination.
• Writing › Check spelling while typing — on by default; misspellings get the small card under the word (chapter 4).
• Writing › Offer corrections — on by default; greyed out when spelling is off.
• Writing › Smart quotes and dashes — off by default. On, straight quotes become curly and hyphens become dashes as you type, the way macOS does in other apps.
• Menu Bar › Run in the menu bar only — off by default. On, the app lives in the menu-bar book icon with no Dock icon; Open Cocoa in that menu brings the window back.

Backups

The daily archives, described in chapter 13: one row per kept zip with Show in Finder, and Export Everything Now….

Customizations outside Settings

• A folder's own pens — Library › inside the folder › Highlighters (chapter 6). "Following the pens above this folder. Any change makes this folder's own set."; Follow the Parent Again drops it.
• Paper — per note in the Inspector (⌥⌘I); Make This the Folder Default writes it into the folder (chapter 4).
• Folder color and icon — right-click a folder in the Library (chapter 3).
• Panes and bars — the View menu shows or hides the sidebar ⌃⌘S, outline ⌃⌘O, inspector ⌥⌘I, files ⌥⌘P, format bar ⇧⌘B, status bar ⌥⌘/ and page thumbnails ⌃⌘P.
• Page mode and zoom — Continuous ⌘1 / One Page ⌘2; ⌘+ ⌘- ⌘0.
• Sort in the Library — Manual, Name, Date Modified, Date Created, Size.

Maya sets up her pens

Maya opens Settings with Command-comma. In Pens she adds Definitions and Formulas from Add Pen, gives Definitions a Dotted underline and turns on its Makes study cards, and gives Formulas ! in the margin. She drags Definitions to the top so it is ⌃1. In General she turns on Smart quotes and dashes. In Shortcuts she tries to give Focus Mode a combination macOS owns and reads the red refusal, then picks another.

Summary

• Pens: name, color, treatment, render style, Collects, Makes study cards; drag to set ⌃1–⌃9.
• Shortcuts: click to rebind; conflicts and macOS-owned combinations are called out; Restore Defaults.
• General: Quick Capture key (⌥Space), spelling, corrections, smart quotes, menu-bar-only.
• Backups: the daily zips.

Common mistakes

• Deleting a pen and expecting the highlights to vanish — they stay, as an unknown pen.
• Rebinding to a system combination and wondering why nothing happens — the strip explains in red.
• Turning off Check spelling and looking for Offer corrections — it is greyed out until spelling is on.

Best practices

• Name pens by meaning; keep the two or three you actually use at ⌃1–⌃3.
• Give a folder its own pens only when its subject really needs them.
• Leave Run in the menu bar only off until you know you want a capture-first app.

Keyboard shortcuts used

Related features to learn next

• Chapter 6, Highlighters and Pens.
• Chapter 15, Keyboard Shortcuts — the full list.
• Chapter 13, Import, Export, Backups and Sync.