Settings · Manual

Every pane of System Settings, what it holds, how Search finds a row, and what to do when a switch will not stay.

What it is

Settings is the one window where you change how WolOS looks, sounds and behaves. It has a sidebar of panes in six groups and, in each pane, cards of rows. Every control either does what it says or is not shown. A change you make can be undone from Restore.

Why

A control that looks changed but was not saved is worse than no control. In 0.12 Settings was rebuilt around that rule: when a save fails, the control goes back to what is saved (Appearance, Desktop & Dock, Keyboard Shortcuts, the automatic-update switches and the Sound switches all do this), and slow work such as reading updates runs in the background so the window never stalls. Search covers every pane and every row, so you never need to know where a setting lives.

How

Opening it and finding a setting

Open Settings: press Super+, (comma), or open it from Search. You see a sidebar of panes on the left and the first pane on the right.
Type in the search field at the top of the sidebar, for example "dark" or "menu bar". You see the sidebar keep only the panes with a hit, and the content show the matching rows until you clear the field. If nothing matches it says "No settings match. Try another word."
Press Return to open the subpage that holds the row. Every Displays row can be found this way.
From a terminal, wol-settings <pane title> opens a pane; put a title with spaces or an ampersand in quotes, for example wol-settings "Privacy & Security". A link to a pane opens it in the window that is already running. In a narrow window the sidebar can be brought back.

The panes

Pane	What it holds
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Network	Join networks and devices, ethernet and addresses. See Control Center for the quick versions.
Notifications	Focus and Do Not Disturb, banners. Banners wait while a game or video is full screen and show after you leave it.
Sound	Outputs with their codec, a 0 dB mark with Allow Louder, balance, inputs with a level meter, Automatic input level and Reduce background noise, Bluetooth codec and switching, Pro Audio rate and buffer, Troubleshooting. See Sound.
General	About, Software Update (Updates), Storage, date and time, language and region, login items, Sharing (computer name, remote login).
Appearance	Light, dark or auto, accent colours that follow light and dark, the theme list, Theme from your wallpaper, a row for themes from plugins, Make a theme (Theme Studio). See Themes in every app.
Accessibility	Reduce motion, transparency and contrast, zoom, cursor size.
Control Center	Which modules and tiles appear in Control Center.
Desktop & Dock	Dock edge, magnification and hiding, the menu bar, the order of items in both (plugin items included), tiling and gaps.
Displays	Resolution, scale, refresh rate and arrangement; a mode is saved only after it was applied. Night Shift is one switch for all displays.
Wallpaper	The desktop picture.
Effects & Looks	Blur, transparency, corners, borders, shadows, animations and presets.
Widgets	Desktop widgets: add, arrange, size. See Desktop widgets.
Battery	Power profile and Low/High Power Mode, lid and sleep, Memory Saver (background apps give memory back after 30 s). See Power.
Lock Screen	When and how the screen locks.
Privacy & Security	App permissions, firewall, the malware check and its optional full signatures, Startup Security. See Privacy and permissions and Secure Boot.
Users & Groups	Accounts, administrator rights, passwords, login shell. Add User refuses names the system reserves.
Keyboard	Key repeat, input sources and Keyboard Shortcuts (with Restore Defaults, which also hides each row's Reset button).
Trackpad & Mouse	Pointer speed, scrolling, tapping.
Printers	Printers and scanners, the default one.
Hardware	Devices, drivers and firmware, with the fix. See Hardware.
Assistants & Automation	What helpers and scripts may change; Always Allow is kept per helper and capability. See Assistants and automation.
Modules	Install and remove the optional modules. See Optional modules.
Restore	Recent Changes with Undo, and earlier system states. See Recovery.

Panes that changed in 0.12

Sound is new: outputs, inputs, effects, Bluetooth and Pro Audio on one pane. Its messages stay until you have read them.
Modules is new, with Installed, Available and Could Not Be Added lists.
Startup Security (under Privacy & Security) shows how this computer starts and finishes a Secure Boot setup that is waiting.
Displays can change refresh rate and arrangement.
Appearance has a Wallpaper row and a row for themes from plugins; Desktop & Dock lost two controls that did nothing.

Terminal equivalents

wol settings prints the settings, wol appearance set light|dark|auto, wol accent set <colour>, wol wallpaper set <file>, wol theme set <id>, wol display brightness <percent>, wol audio volume <percent>, wol toggle nightlight, and so on. The complete list shows which ones helpers may call.

If something goes wrong

What you see	What to do
A switch flips back after you click it	The change could not be saved, so the control shows what is saved. Try again; for updates and Sound the line under the section says why.
"No settings match. Try another word."	Search found no pane or row. Try a shorter word (a row's name or its words, like "menu bar").
Displays says "Displays appear here once the desktop is running"	No display was reported; open Settings from the running desktop.
Modules says it cannot read the list	The list could not be read, which is different from "No modules are available on this computer right now". See Optional modules.
Sound says "Sound devices are coming back"	The sound server is restarting. Wait a few seconds.
"That name is reserved by the system"	Pick another account name in Add User.
You changed something and regret it	Restore > Recent Changes > Undo, or `wol undo`.