Skip to main content
Vixlo 0.1

The Settings window

Settings is a small window of its own, where you check your account, make Vixlo's words bigger, point the edit page's assistant at a model, put your name on exported files, or turn on a log for a bug report. Nothing on it asks for a relaunch, and every choice is saved as you make it, but a change does not show everywhere at once: Where a change shows says where each one lands. The keys you cull with are not on it; they are on a sheet of their own, and What is not on the page says where.

The Settings window as it opens, signed in and with Ollama connected

Opening Settings​

There are three doors, and they all open the same window:

  • Vixlo ▸ Settings… in the menu bar, or ⌘, (the Mac's usual shortcut for an app's settings).
  • Settings… in the popover that opens from the account button, the circled person directly above Your keys at the bottom of the cull page's side panel.
  • The Settings link under the edit page's Ask for an adjustment… field, which appears whenever the field is disabled for a reason Settings can fix, such as Needs an API key.

The account button's popover on the cull page, with Manage account…, Settings… and Sign out

The window opens on its own, with the library window still behind it, and you can leave it open while you work. Close it with its close button; your changes are already saved, except a key typed under Cloud providers and not yet saved with Save or ↩. A key is the one thing on the page that waits for you.

What is on the page​

The page is one column that scrolls. Its title reads Settings, with the line Where Vixlo looks for AI, and what it is allowed to send off this Mac. under it, though only three of the seven sections — Ollama, Cloud providers and Privacy — are about AI. The sections come in this order:

  1. Account — who is signed in and what the account allows right now, with Refresh, Account page and Sign out, and the three answers you gave when you created the account. See The Account section.
  2. Appearance — Text size, three steps for how big Vixlo's own words are. See Text size.
  3. Ollama — the local daemon's address, whether it is answering, and which installed model the assistant should use. See Ollama, a model on your own Mac.
  4. Cloud providers — Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, each with a field for an API key, and a Model row for Anthropic. See Cloud providers and their keys.
  5. Exported files — Creator and Copyright, written into every file you export. See Creator and Copyright.
  6. Privacy — the Local only switch, which turns every cloud provider off at once. See Local only, and which route a sentence takes.
  7. Diagnostics — Write a diagnostic log, with the folder the files go to and what they take up. See Writing a diagnostic log.

Under the last section, when something has gone wrong, a red-tinted banner says what: a key that could not be saved, or a browser that could not be opened. It stays until a key is saved or cleared successfully; a Recheck, a switch or a chip leaves it where it is.

What is not on the page​

The keys. The keys preset, which is the choice of the Vixlo, Lightroom or Photo Mechanic keyboard, and every individual key are not in this window. They are on the Keyboard sheet, which you open with Vixlo ▸ Keyboard…, in the same group of the Vixlo menu as Settings…. See The keys preset.

Two more things in that group are not on the page either. Vixlo ▸ Models… lists the models installed on this Mac, and Vixlo ▸ Vixlo Account… opens your account page in the browser, the same as Account page in the Account section. See Your account in the app.

Where a change shows​

  • Text size moves Vixlo's words in every window, this one included, while you watch.
  • Local only, a key saved or cleared and the Ollama model chips reach the edit page's Ask for an adjustment… field as you change them, even when the edit page is open behind this window.
  • Recheck, or ↩ in the Ollama address field, asks Ollama again, and the answer shows in this window. Starting Ollama, pulling a model or typing a new address shows nothing until you do one of those two.
  • Creator and Copyright show nowhere on screen. They are written into the files you export from then on.
In Vixlo 0.1

An edit page that is already open does not take Ollama's new answer, even after Recheck: it keeps the one it took when it opened. Press Recheck, then leave the edit page and open it again. See Ollama, a model on your own Mac.

Two things the window does on its own​

It is always dark. The Settings window keeps Vixlo's own dark face whatever the Mac's appearance is set to, the same as the rest of the app.

It follows Text size. The words on this page scale with the step you choose under Appearance, so you see the change here as you make it, not only in the library window. The Aa in each of the three chips does not move, because each one is drawn as a specimen of the size it sets.