Settings and window appearance
Settings for the whole app are in one place. This page covers opening Settings, the General, Appearance, Privacy and About pages, and how to make windows more or less transparent. The pages after About (Connections, Terminal, Snippets, Databases, Desktops and Editor) are described in the help for those features.
Open Settings#
- On Vision Pro: choose Settings (gear) in the bar below the library window. Settings opens in its own window, with its pages as tabs beside it, on the page you last used.
- On Mac: choose Glass Power Tools ▸ Settings… (⌘,). The pages are icons across the top of the window, and Settings reopens on the page you last used.
- On iPad: choose Settings (gear) in the library's toolbar. Choose a page from the control at the top, and choose Done when you finish.
- On iPhone: choose Settings (gear) in the library's toolbar, then choose a page from the list. Every page has Done.
Light or Dark#
On Mac, iPad and iPhone, Appearance starts with Appearance: System, Light or Dark, for the whole app: every window, and on the Mac its sheets, menus and Command Palette too. System follows this device's own Light or Dark setting. A terminal theme keeps its own colors. It is kept on this device. Vision Pro has no such choice.
Change how transparent windows are#
Choose Appearance. The Windows section has:
- Opacity: how strongly the theme color is painted behind content, from transparent to opaque.
- Glass: how much glass is behind a window, from none to full. On Mac: the title bar follows this setting too.
- Material (on Mac, iPad and iPhone): the kind of glass: Light, Medium, Heavy or Max. It is unavailable while Glass is at 0%.
- Reset Appearance: returns to the starting settings: Opacity 0%, Glass 100% and Material Heavy.
The sliders settle on 0%, 50% and 100% when you drag near them. Text and controls stay fully visible at every setting. For a completely clear window, set Opacity and Glass to 0%.
On Vision Pro: there is no Material to choose. Glass is a window's own glass: at 100% it looks like any visionOS window, and at 0% there is none. In a terminal or remote desktop window, Opacity paints only the area its content sits in (the terminal's text, the desktop's screen). In Connections, Files, the editor and the database, Opacity paints the theme color across the whole window, and under the editor's text. Every window is completely clear at 0% Glass and 0% Opacity, apart from its text and controls.
These settings also apply to terminal windows. They are kept on each device.
One window's own glass#
A window can keep its own Opacity, Glass and Material in place of these: terminal, editor and database windows. (A remote desktop window has its own glass settings instead; see its This Window.)
- In a terminal, open its tools menu, choose Settings, then This Window, which has Opacity and Glass, and Material on iPad; see Give a terminal window its own settings.
- In an editor window, choose Settings (gear) in its toolbar, then This Window, which has Opacity and Glass, and Material on Mac and iPad; see Give an editor window its own settings.
- In a database window, choose Settings (gear) in its toolbar, then This Window, which has Opacity and Glass; see Give a database window its own settings.
Each follows Appearance until you change it there, and only that window changes. A setting the window has changed shows a small ↺ beside its name, which returns it to Appearance. Whatever a window hasn't set follows Appearance.
Note
When Reduce Transparency is on in the system's Accessibility settings, every window is opaque, and these controls are unavailable until you turn it off.
On Mac, Appearance ends with Show All Windows ▸ Blur previews, which softens the pictures in Show All Windows so a screenshot of it can be shared; see AI agents and private pictures.
General#
Under This Device, give this device a name. Your Library's overview uses it on all your devices when it counts connections by device (see The library at a glance). Left empty, the name is what the system calls the device: on a Mac its computer name; on iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro, the kind of device ("iPhone"), so two of the same kind are best named here.
Under Library, Show service availability (off by default) puts a dot beside each service in a host's details, and on each kind of service in the host's row, for the least responsive service of that kind: green when it answers, orange when it answers slowly, red when it does not. While the library is on screen, this device opens a connection to each service's port about once a minute and closes it at once; it never signs in. A Screen Sharing (VNC) service is checked every ten minutes instead, because each connection makes a Mac start its screen sharing for a while. A service you're connected to isn't checked: it always shows a green dot, with this setting on or off, and is checked again on its usual schedule after you disconnect. A SQLite file, a database reached through its machine's SSH connection, and this Mac's own terminal have no dot.
On Vision Pro: Shrink Connections when idle sets how long the library window waits, with no tap, scroll or typing in it, before it shrinks into a small orb while other windows are open: Never, 1 Minute, 2 Minutes (the starting setting), 5 Minutes or 10 Minutes. Tap the orb to bring the window back. See Bring the library back on Vision Pro.
General also shows the state of your host library on this device under Host Library: how many Hosts it has and whether This device is kept on this device only. If the file that holds favorites and recent hosts cannot be read, an orange message here explains why, and favorites and Recent cannot be changed until it can.
Privacy#
Credentials shows where passwords and keys are kept and their Default mobility. With iCloud Keychain, a credential you save is available on your other devices. Nothing on this page shows or reads a secret.
On your other devices shows the Host library sync status and explains which secrets travel with you. See "Your library on all your devices".
Show Machines in Search, off by default, puts your machines' and Workgroups' names in Spotlight and Siri on this device, to open them from there. Names only: addresses and credentials are never indexed. See Find your machines in Spotlight.
About#
About shows the app's version, a Sponsor link and Acknowledgements.
On Mac, a build that updates itself also has Check for updates automatically, Check Now and when it last checked, and the app menu has Check for Updates…. Any other build says This build does not update itself.
Choose Acknowledgements to see every third-party component in the app, grouped by what it is used for. Search by name or licence, and choose a component to read its licence text and see where its source is published. Choose Done to close the list.