Settings, accessibility and updates controls
The gear in the app bar, on every screen, opens the Settings dialog. Settings belong to the app, not to a project, so they follow you from project to project.
Every option is a choice among a few named things, drawn as a segmented control with the current choice lit, and a line under the control says what that choice means. A choice takes effect when pressed; there is no Apply. The exception to the segmented control is Language, a drop-down.
The app bar keeps only what has news: an available update, and the agents mark while an assistant is connected or could not reach the app. The home page’s bar also has the News button, with a count while something is unread; see News.
The dialog has six pages down a rail on its left. Every page has the same height, and both columns scroll.
| Page | Rail description | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| General | Appearance, accessibility, language | How the app looks, reads and plays |
| Data control | What leaves this machine | Usage statistics |
| Updates | Channel, release notes, engine fixes, news | Release channel, Release notes and its filters, Engine updates, Use the bundled engine, News |
| Agents | Assistants that reach the app | The assistant connection; see MCP tools |
| Support | Questions, bugs, ideas | The Support page |
| About | Version, credits, licences | The About box |
Agents, Support and About are pages of the dialog rather than settings. The command palette’s Agents, Support and About commands open their pages, and so does the agents mark in the app bar.
Documentation leads the pointers in the About box. Panels that explain a feature (the variables panel, the agents page, the Python sandbox, the export dialog, the metadata editor and the state machine editor’s bar) say what you are looking at and link to the documentation page that carries the rest.
General
Section titled “General”Rows in page order.
| Row | Choices | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Language | System, then each available language under its own name | The language of the app’s own menus, dialogs, messages and tips |
| Appearance | System, Light, Dark | System follows the operating system; the others are always that theme |
| Links | Curved, Right-angled | How wires are drawn on a board |
| Contrast | Standard, More | How firmly text and controls separate; see Contrast |
| Colour vision | Off, Protan, Deutan, Tritan | Which palettes are swapped; see Colour vision |
| Playing | 128, 512, 2,048, 8,192, None | The loop ceiling |
| Writing | Check spelling and grammar, Off | Whether English passages and notes are checked as you type; see How to check spelling and grammar |
Language
Section titled “Language”- Each language is listed under its own name, so a language is findable when the app is showing one that cannot be read.
- System follows the operating system’s language and says which language it currently resolves to.
- The setting is the language of the app only. A project’s own text and languages are set in the project’s settings; see Passages, choices, languages and reading time.
- The row is shown only in a build that ships more than one language.
- A stored language this build does not offer is read as System.
- Italian is currently the only language besides English. It was drafted by a model and spot-checked rather than read line by line, so report anything that reads oddly.
Appearance
Section titled “Appearance”System follows whatever the OS is set to. Light and Dark are always that theme. Appearance is independent of Contrast and Colour vision, so dark and More contrast can be on together.
The default look is quiet and monochrome: the main button in each view is filled with the text colour, and selection, focus and the active tab are drawn in it too, in light and dark alike. Colour is kept for what it tells you: node families, traced routes, version-control marks and warnings. Links in Markdown are underlined, and the app icon is a dark plate with the mark in white.
| Choice | Wires |
|---|---|
| Curved | Curve from port to port. Double-click a wire to add a handle and drag it to route the wire. |
| Right-angled | Run in straight legs and turn at right angles. A handle is a corner; dragged, it lines up with its neighbours. |
Playing
Section titled “Playing”Playing is the loop ceiling: how many times one loop node may go round before a campaign stops with an error and offers you the node. It is counted per loop and per board; jumping away and coming back starts the count again.
| Choice | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| 128, 512, 2,048, 8,192 | The campaign stops with an error at that count |
| None | A loop node may go round for ever; a While with nothing breaking out of it never ends and does not stop the campaign |
Contrast
Section titled “Contrast”| Choice | Effect |
|---|---|
| Standard | Text and controls clear the usual accessibility floor. |
| More | Body and caption text reach the stricter accessibility grade (AAA). Every text field, button, chip, switch and checkbox has a findable edge. Muted text, control edges and hairlines are firmer. |
Colours stay the same and the page does not change shape.
Colour vision
Section titled “Colour vision”| Choice | Palettes recoloured for |
|---|---|
| Off | The house colours |
| Protan | Protanopia and protanomaly |
| Deutan | Deuteranopia and deuteranomaly, the commonest kind |
| Tritan | Tritanopia and tritanomaly |
A mode recolours everything the app uses colour to tell apart:
- the node families on a board;
- traced routes;
- the marks version control puts on files;
- status colours;
- syntax highlighting;
- the diff, which stops being red and green.
Palettes are chosen so that things which share a shape do not share a colour, and are checked against a simulation of all eight kinds of colour blindness. Neutral greys are not changed.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”- Three places tell categories apart by hue and nothing else: the board minimap and the overview’s, where a family is a few-pixel rectangle with no icon or label; the traced routes; and a soundscape clip too narrow to have its mode written on it. A colour-vision mode improves them without making them readable to everyone.
- There is no mode for either achromatic kind of colour blindness.
- The app has no screen-reader support.
See What the accessibility settings do and do not claim.
Text size
Section titled “Text size”Text size is not a setting of the app.
| Part | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Chrome | Follows the system’s text size, up to double |
| Cards on a board | Stay at the size they were drawn at; zoom makes a board bigger |
Data control
Section titled “Data control”| Row | Choices | Behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| Usage statistics | Off, On | Off until pressed to On. The full list of what is sent is shown under the control, and the identifier is shown while on. Nothing is sent until it has been on for an hour. |
Switching off destroys the identifier. To have what was sent deleted, write to the address shown on the page with the identifier before switching off. Switching on again starts a new installation. What is sent is listed in What the app sends.
Updates
Section titled “Updates”Release channel
Section titled “Release channel”Which releases the app offers you. Stable offers tested releases only. Preview also offers early builds of the next version, as soon as they are ready: their version ends in -prev and a number, such as 1.6.0-prev.2. A preview can change or break things before they reach Stable, and a project saved in one may be written in a newer format that Stable cannot open until it catches up.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Release channel: Stable | Only stable releases are offered. |
| Release channel: Preview | Previews are offered too. When a stable release is newer than the latest preview, that release is offered instead. Switching asks you to confirm first. |
After a switch the app checks again and says what it found under the control: a newer release, and that the download button at the top of the window installs it; nothing newer, so you stay where you are; or that the update server could not be reached. A version you install from the app is never older than the one you are running, on either channel. Switching back to Stable stops the previews; it does not reinstall an older version.
When you switch back to Stable while running a preview that is newer than Stable, the app warns you first and recommends staying on Preview. If you switch anyway, the preview you are running gets no updates until Stable passes it, and a project saved in the preview may not open in Stable.
A copy installed from a preview starts on Preview. The download page only ever offers Stable: Preview is reached from inside the app.
Release notes
Section titled “Release notes”After an update the app shows what changed in each release you have not read yet, newest first. An update that skipped versions shows every one in between. Each release wears tags under its name: its size, and what it brings.
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Major, Minor, Patch | The size of the release, read from its version number: 2.0.0, 1.5.0, 1.5.1. |
| Hotfix | A patch cut quickly to fix one problem. It takes the place of Patch. |
| New features | Something you could not do before. |
| Improvements | Something you could already do works better. |
| Fixes | Something that did not work now does. |
| Action needed | Something you have to do or know, such as a file older versions cannot open. |
| Security | A security problem is fixed. |
Don’t show release notes again, at the bottom of the notice, turns it off. The notice says where to turn it back on.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Release notes: Show after an update | The notice appears after an update, for the releases the filters below let through. |
| Release notes: Don’t show | No notice appears. What’s new, on the About page, still lists every release. The filters stay on the page, greyed. |
| Release type | Which sizes of release are announced. |
| Contents | Which kinds of change are announced. |
A release is announced when its size is ticked and at least one of its contents is ticked. Unticking Patch hides every patch, whatever it fixes. With nothing ticked in a group, no release is announced. Releases you skip while the notice is off or filtered out are not shown later. A preview’s notes are shown only to a preview, and wear a Preview tag; a stable release’s notes cover every preview before it.
Engine updates
Section titled “Engine updates”The part of the app that plays and compiles campaigns can be fixed without a new installer. A fix is fetched in the background, checked against a signature before it is trusted, and used from the next launch. If the app crashes with a fix, the fix is set aside automatically. A fix never changes what the app can do.
A button in the app bar shows while a fix is arriving, and again once it is ready, with the version it moves to.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Engine updates: On | Fixes are fetched in the background and used from the next launch. |
| Engine updates: Off | The engine stays the one this version came with, or the last fix already fetched. |
| Use the bundled engine | Removes the fixes already fetched. The bundled engine is used from the next launch, and the page confirms it. |
While a fix is in use the page reads Running engine followed by its version, a fix fetched after this version was installed. The engine button opens a dialog with two states. While a fix downloads, it says the fix is being downloaded and checked and that nothing changes until the app next starts. When the fix is ready, it says it has been downloaded and checked, takes effect at the next start, and that there is nothing to install. What the request carries is in What the app sends.
Short items from us, such as a new binding or integration, a change worth knowing about, or something to do before an update, shown on the home screen without an update. The News button on the home page’s bar opens them as a screen of their own, newest first, each with a banner and its title. A number on the button counts the items you have not opened. Opening an item marks it and everything older as read, and Mark all as read does it for the lot. The first time, only items from the last thirty days count as unread.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| News: On | Once per launch the app asks ripplefx.app for the news. The request carries nothing about you, and which items you have read stays on your machine. |
| News: Off | Nothing is fetched, and the News button is hidden. |
The news needs version 2.0 of the licence agreement. A copy that accepted 1.0 fetches nothing until it has accepted 2.0, whatever the switch says, and the page says so under it. If the news cannot be loaded, the screen says so and the next launch tries again. What the request carries is in What the app sends.
Support page
Section titled “Support page”Opened by Settings ▸ Support or Support and feedback in the Help menu. Bugs, questions and ideas go to the public support repository, ripple_effect_support, on GitHub.
| Entry | Does |
|---|---|
| Ask a question | Opens Discussions: usage, ideas, showing what you made |
| Report a bug | Opens the bug form with the version, operating system and installer origin already answered, and the technical details filled in |
| Request a feature | Opens a new issue tagged as an enhancement |
| Browse open issues | Shows whether a problem is already known |
What to attach shows only while a session folder exists:
| Entry | Does |
|---|---|
| Save this session as a zip | Packs the session’s log and reports into one file to attach to an issue. Its detail line names the session’s id. |
The page states what is replaced before anything is written down: username and home folder, the project’s location, e-mail addresses, IP addresses and anything shaped like a key or a token. Times are recorded in UTC. Nothing uploads these files; the one exception is a crash report, which the app asks about first and sends only if you say yes.
Help menu
Section titled “Help menu”The rest of what you might attach, and the tips, are in the Help menu rather than on the page. All of them are also command palette commands.
| Entry | Does |
|---|---|
| Show every tip again | Each tip appears once more, as you reach the thing it is about |
| Troubleshooting ▸ Copy package info | Copies which build this is and how it was installed |
| Troubleshooting ▸ Copy device info | Copies the operating system underneath |
| Troubleshooting ▸ Open this session’s folder | Opens the log, the crash reports and the build information |
Links the app opens: those for reporting a bug, asking a question, the survey, the documentation, the licence and the Privacy Notice go through an address on ripplefx.app, which redirects to where the thing lives.
First launch
Section titled “First launch”After the agreement pages, a first launch shows two pages. Both can be skipped, and everything on them is in Settings afterwards.
| Page | Contents |
|---|---|
| First | Appearance, Contrast, Colour vision and how wires are drawn, beside a small preview of the app that changes as you choose |
| Second | The Usage statistics question with neither answer chosen and the full list of what would be sent, how crash reports are asked, and a mention of donations |