Settings & Preferences

Open settings with Ctrl+, (or Cmd+, on macOS). Settings are organized into seven tabs: Interface, Defaults, Account, Network, Performance, Privacy, and About. Most settings take effect immediately. UI Scale requires clicking Apply, and changes to Processing Threads take effect after restarting the app.

Right-click any control on any tab and choose Revert to Default to restore that single setting to its shipped value. This works on every checkbox, dropdown, and slider in the window. Each tab also has a help icon in its header that opens the matching page of this documentation.

Interface

Visual preferences for the editor, canvas, and display.

Theme

Setting	Default	Options
Color Scheme	Violet	Emerald, Violet, Ocean, Rose, Amber, Graphite
Color Picker	Hue Bar	Hue Bar (vertical strip) or Hue Wheel (circular). Applies to every color picker in the app.
UI Scale	1.0x	Scale the entire interface (0.5x to 2.0x). Requires Apply. On Linux, the detected system scale is shown beneath the slider with an Auto button that matches it.

Node Graph

Setting	Default	Options
Wire Style	Curved	Curved, Straight, Rounded, Right Angle
Wire Curving	4	How much Curved wires bend between pins (0 = straight line, 10 = heavy bend). Disabled when Wire Style is not Curved.
Snap Mode	Snap to Nodes	How dragged nodes, groups, and sticky notes snap: Snap to Nodes (align edges to nearby nodes with guide lines), Snap to Grid (snap to a fixed grid), or None. Grid snapping is no longer the default. Hold Ctrl while dragging to move freely.
Snap Strength	6 px	How close an edge must be before it snaps to a neighbor (2 to 16 pixels). Lower is subtler, higher is stickier. Shown when Snap Mode is Snap to Nodes.
Snap Search Distance	480 px	How far a neighboring node can be and still snap into alignment while dragging (120 to 1600 pixels). Separate from Snap Strength, which sets how close an edge must be to lock on. Shown when Snap Mode is Snap to Nodes.
Alignment Guides	On	Draw dashed guide lines between aligned node edges while dragging. Shown when Snap Mode is Snap to Nodes.
Equal Spacing	On	Snap a dragged node to even spacing with a run of nearby nodes, with double-arrow badges marking the equal gaps. Shown when Snap Mode is Snap to Nodes.
Grid Spacing	16 px	Grid cell size when Snap Mode is Snap to Grid (8 to 64 pixels). Shown when Snap Mode is Snap to Grid.

Display

Setting	Default	Description
Interface Animations	On	Smooth motion across the editor: the canvas glides when framing or zooming to nodes, new nodes fade in and deleted ones leave a brief ghost, evaluations and new wires pulse, and modals, the search bar, tooltips, badges, and toasts ease in. Turn off for an instant, static interface.
Text Hinting	Crisp	How UI text is fitted to the pixel grid. Crisp (the default) aligns glyphs to the pixel grid for noticeably sharper text, Light applies gentler hinting, and None turns it off. Takes effect immediately; the difference is subtler on HiDPI/Retina displays.
Hide Cloud Nodes	Off	Hides the Cloud category (Remove Background, Upscale) from the node library. Turn it on if you only want local nodes; the Cloud nodes send images through ArcBrush’s cloud service to a third-party provider for processing and require a free account.

Display Color Correction (your monitor’s ICC profile, so previewed colors match exported colors) now lives in the menu bar’s Color menu rather than here; see Color & Bit Depth for the full color-management workflow. On Linux under Wayland it stays disabled, since the compositor manages display color correction and ArcBrush leaves it to the system.

The quick visibility toggles that used to live here (Full Path in Title Bar, Panel Scrollbars, the Status Bar readouts, Quick-Lock Preview, and Compact Parameters) now live in the View menu.

Tooltips

Setting	Default	Options
Enable Tooltips	On	Show or hide hover tooltips
Tooltip Delay	0.4 s	Delay before a tooltip appears (0 to 2.0 seconds)

You can also middle-mouse drag to scroll in the Library and Parameters panels.

View Menu

The View menu holds the editor’s quick visibility toggles (moved here from Settings) plus zoom actions. Each toggle is saved with your preferences.

Item	Default	Description
Compact Parameters	On	Show each parameter’s label and control on one line instead of stacked, shortening the Parameters panel.
Quick-Lock Preview	On	Double-click a node to lock the preview to it; double-click empty canvas to unlock.

Display submenu:

Item	Default	Description
Full Path in Title Bar	Off	Show the complete .arcb file path instead of just the filename.
Panel Scrollbars	On	Show thin scrollbars in the Library and Parameters panels. When off, scrollbars appear only when content overflows.

Status Bar submenu:

Item	Default	Description
Memory Usage	Off	Show RAM, image cache, and VRAM usage in the status bar, each as used of total. The image cache lives in RAM; a separate Spill indicator appears when batch frames overflow to disk.
Network Status	Off	Show an Online/Offline dot for the ArcBrush API server in the status bar.

Manipulator Snapping submenu:

Item	Default	Description
Enabled	On	Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) while dragging a preview manipulator to snap it onto the image frame’s edges, corners, center, and thirds.
Snap to Thirds	Off	Include the rule-of-thirds lines as manipulator snap targets.

The View menu also includes Minimap, Hide Thumbnails (Lazy Eval), and the zoom actions (Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom to Fit, Zoom to Selected, Reset Zoom); see Keyboard Shortcuts for their hotkeys.

Defaults

Project defaults and file behavior.

New Project Defaults

Default dimensions for new canvases. Existing graphs keep their own canvas size.

Setting	Default	Range
Canvas Width	1024 px	1 to 8192 (slider), up to 16384
Canvas Height	1024 px	1 to 8192 (slider), up to 16384

Behavior

Setting	Default	Description
Reopen last file on startup	On	Automatically reopen the most recent graph on startup

Auto-Save

ArcBrush periodically saves a backup of your work. If the app closes unexpectedly, it offers to restore the last auto-saved state on next launch.

Setting	Default	Range
Enable Auto-Save	On	Toggle automatic backups
Interval	120 s	How often to save (30 to 600 seconds)
Max Snapshots	5	Number of rotating backups to keep (1 to 10)

File Association

Register or remove the .arcb file type association so double-clicking a project file opens ArcBrush. On macOS, registered files show the ArcBrush document icon in Finder.

Preferences Folder

Opens the per-user folder where ArcBrush stores its settings, logs, and autosaves. You usually don’t need to touch this folder, but it’s useful when you’re attaching logs to a bug report, migrating settings to a new machine, or clearing recovery data.

Default location

Platform	Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\ArcBrush\ (typically C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\ArcBrush\)
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/ArcBrush/
Linux	~/.config/arcbrush/

The folder is created automatically the first time ArcBrush runs.

What’s inside

Item	What it is
settings.json	Your in-app preferences (theme, default canvas size, etc.). Saved automatically whenever you change something in Settings & Preferences.
window.json	The last window position, size, and monitor, used to restore your layout on launch.
logs/	Rolling application logs (arcbrush_<timestamp>.log). Attach the most recent file to bug reports. Older logs are pruned automatically.
autosave/	Recovery snapshots of open documents, plus an index.json. ArcBrush prompts to restore from here after a crash.
unsaved_data/	Image cache for graphs you haven’t saved yet, so unsaved work survives a restart.
clipboard_images/	Temporary storage for images copied between graphs.
arcbrush.cfg	Optional. An INI-style file for advanced overrides (custom proxy URL, performance flags, dev toggles). ArcBrush does not create this for you. Add it only if a setting tells you to.

Safe to delete

• logs/, unsaved_data/, and clipboard_images/ regenerate on the next launch.
• Deleting autosave/ discards crash-recovery snapshots for documents that haven’t been saved as .arcb files.
• Deleting settings.json resets ArcBrush to defaults.
• Don’t delete the folder while ArcBrush is running.

Account

Sign in to manage your Pro license, or sign out. The editor works without an account, except for the two Cloud nodes (Remove Background and Upscale), which require a free account to use.

Network

Configure how ArcBrush connects to the internet. Most users never need to touch this tab. ArcBrush either connects directly or, on a fresh install, picks up the system proxy automatically. The tab exists for users behind a corporate firewall, VPN, or TLS-inspecting proxy that needs explicit configuration.

Every change on this tab applies immediately to the next request and triggers a connectivity recheck. There is no Apply button.

Status

A live indicator at the top of the tab shows the current connection state to the ArcBrush API server:

Indicator	Meaning
Connected (direct)	Reaching the server without a proxy.
Via proxy host:port	Reaching the server through the resolved proxy.
Checking…	A connectivity probe is in flight.
Offline	The most recent probe failed.

The status refreshes whenever you change a setting on this tab, when the Settings window regains focus, and on a periodic background interval.

HTTP Proxy

Mode	Behavior
No proxy	Always connect directly. Use this if your network has no proxy and you want to skip system-proxy resolution.
Auto-detect (use system proxy)	Resolve the proxy from your operating system: WinHTTP / Internet Options on Windows (including PAC files), CFNetworkCopySystemProxySettings on macOS, and the HTTP_PROXY / HTTPS_PROXY / ALL_PROXY environment variables on Linux. Default for new installs. Resolved values are cached for 30 seconds.
Manual configuration	Use the Proxy URL and Bypass list you provide below.

Migration note. Existing installs upgrading to a build that includes the Network tab keep their previous behavior (No proxy) so nothing changes unexpectedly. Only fresh installs default to Auto-detect. If you upgraded and now sit behind a corporate proxy, switch the mode to Auto-detect or Manual.

When Manual configuration is selected, the following fields apply:

Field	Description
Proxy URL	A single proxy URL. Examples: http://proxy.corp:8080, https://proxy.corp:8443, socks5://10.0.0.1:1080. Embedded credentials in the URL are not recommended; use the Authentication section instead.
Bypass list	Optional comma-separated list of hosts that should skip the proxy. Wildcards are supported. Example: localhost,127.0.0.1,*.internal.

Authentication

Available only when Manual configuration is selected. The credentials section is enabled once you choose an Auth method other than None.

Setting	Description
Auth method	None, Basic, NTLM, or Negotiate (Kerberos / SPNEGO). Pick what your IT contact specifies for the proxy.
Username	The username your proxy expects. For NTLM this can be DOMAIN\user or user@DOMAIN.
Password	Stored in your operating system’s credential vault: Windows Credential Manager, macOS Keychain, or libsecret on Linux. The password is never written to settings.json and is loaded into the Settings window only while the Network tab is visible.

Negotiate requires libcurl built with SPNEGO support. The shipping Windows build includes it; on platforms where it is unavailable the option will fail to connect and Test connection reports the cause.

TLS

Setting	Default	Description
Use system certificate trust	On	Trust the certificate store managed by your OS (Windows certificate store, macOS Keychain, Linux trust roots). Recommended. Leave this on so corporate root CAs installed by your IT department continue to be trusted.
Custom CA bundle	Empty	Optional path to a PEM or CRT file containing one or more root certificates to trust in addition to the system store. Use this when a TLS-intercepting proxy presents certificates signed by a CA that is not yet in your system trust store. Click Browse to pick the file.

If a configured Custom CA bundle path becomes invalid (file moved or deleted), ArcBrush logs a warning and falls back to the system trust store.

Connectivity

The Test connection button runs a four-step diagnostic against the ArcBrush API server using your current Network settings, and prints the result with one line per step into a scrollable panel below the button:

1. Resolved proxy. The proxy URL that the current settings produce, or direct if none.
2. TCP connect. Whether the underlying socket connects to the proxy (or, in direct mode, to the API server).
3. TLS handshake or Proxy CONNECT. For direct mode, whether the certificate chain validates; for proxy mode, whether the proxy accepts the CONNECT tunnel. On a TLS verification failure the diagnostic prints the untrusted CA name found in the chain so you know exactly which certificate to ask your IT department for.
4. HTTP GET /health. A final round-trip to the server’s health endpoint, with the response status and a body excerpt.

Each failure includes a one-line tip pointing at the field most likely to fix it (set Manual mode, configure auth, load a CA bundle, etc.).

The Copy diagnostics button copies the entire output to the clipboard so you can paste it into a support email.

Privacy. Diagnostics include the API server hostname and the resolved proxy URL but never your username, password, or the contents of your custom CA bundle.

Performance

Hardware and processing settings.

Setting	Default	Description
Processing Threads	0 (auto)	Number of CPU threads for node evaluation. 0 = automatic. Requires restart.
GPU Acceleration	On (auto-detected)	Use OpenCL and compute shaders for accelerated processing when a compatible GPU is available. Toggling this takes effect in the current session, no restart needed.
Batch Concurrency Cap	auto	Maximum batch frames that evaluate in parallel (1 to thread count). Default is max(2, threads / 4).
Batch Memory Ceiling	Half of installed RAM	When in-flight batch frames would exceed this limit, frames spill to a temp cache on disk. The default is half your installed RAM and the slider range scales to your machine, so large-memory systems are not throttled and low-memory systems are not overcommitted.

Privacy

Setting	Default	Description
Send anonymous telemetry	On	Send anonymous usage statistics to help improve ArcBrush. No personal data, images, or file paths are collected.
Check for updates on startup	On	Check for new versions when ArcBrush launches. When one is found, ArcBrush downloads, installs, and relaunches it from inside the app on Windows, macOS, and Linux (Linux installs the new AppImage in place).
Download updates automatically	Off	When an available update is found, download it in the background automatically; installing still requires your confirmation. When off, ArcBrush prompts first and downloads only when you choose to.