Settings and themes

Where the options are

In General → General settings you adjust, in sections: General options (language, autosave, release idle tabs, tab color palette, window title, daily notes, spell checking), the application Theme, the Editor font and colors, the Markdown style, Execution (interpreters), the Terminal (shells), the AI Assistants (CLIs and the default AI), Versioning and the Database (pagination, Oracle Instant Client).

A search field at the top of the section list filters by the options on each page; and the Features section gathers the toggles for the optional features — connections graph, sticky notes, AI sessions, AI Chat, audio recording, resurface old notes, keep the computer awake and Windows Explorer menu integration. Turning a feature off removes it from the interface, the tray and the shortcuts, and stops consuming resources — but keeps the data already created; the change takes effect on restart.

File types and screens: only what you use

In Settings → Features, the File types and screens group is for people who use only part of LightNote: API tests, SSH/SFTP connections, Databases, Blocks notebook, Custom Tables, Task boards, Bases and the Built-in terminal. Turned off, the type disappears from the New menu, the command palette and the shortcuts list right away, with no restart; with databases off, the Database section of the Settings disappears too. Nothing is deleted: a file of a type that is off opens as text, and a folder of it as an ordinary folder. Tabs that were already open stay.

The first time you open LightNote, right after the language, the What will you use? screen asks the same question in four lines: code and terminal; data (databases, API tests and SSH); Blocks notebook and Custom Tables; Task boards and Bases. Notes are always on. Everything comes checked, and any choice can be changed here later.

Themes

The application theme changes the program's appearance (menus, tabs, panels, status bar). There are several ready-made themes — light ones (Light, Solarized Light, Catppuccin Latte, Gruvbox Light, One Light, Rosé Pine Dawn, Everforest Light, Tokyo Night Day) and dark ones (Dark, Tokyo Night, Dracula, Ayu Mirage, Nord, Gruvbox Dark, Everforest Dark, Kanagawa Wave) — plus the Custom mode with an accent color. New themes arrive through the online catalog, without having to update the application.

The code Editor and Markdown colors are chosen separately, in their own sections, independent of the application theme. Each one has a Theme: combo with ready-made color schemes (Default, Dracula, One, Nord, Gruvbox and Tokyo Night, in light and dark variants), a live preview and a Save as… button to store your own colors as a reusable preset.

Per-window theme. Each folder (workspace) can have its own theme, so you can keep two windows open with different looks at the same time. In Workspace Settings → Appearance of this folder there are combos for the theme for this window (the application's look), the code theme and the Markdown theme — each with a Follow general theme/Keep default option to leave it unchanged. Overriding the code and Markdown themes is handy to match the editor colors to a dark theme in that folder only, without touching the general Settings. These choices stay on your machine (they are not committed to Git).

Fonts. LightNote ships three fonts of its own, identical on Windows and Linux: Inter for note text, Cascadia Mono for all code (editor, code blocks, terminal) and Literata, a serif face for long reading, in the Serifado (Livro) Markdown theme. The Editor, Markdown and sticky notes fonts can be changed in Settings, and all three appear in the list. If you were using the previous default font, you were moved to the new one automatically; a font you chose yourself is left as is.

Tools, title and layout

Install guide. When you pick a catalog tool (AI assistant, interpreter, formatter, linter or database driver) that is not on your computer yet — or you try to run/format/lint a file whose interpreter is missing — LightNote opens an install guide. When a safe command exists (via winget), the guide shows the exact command and runs it in an embedded console with one click; if the tool depends on another (for example, a CLI that needs Node.js), it offers to install the prerequisite first. Without an automatic installer, the guide opens the official download page with step-by-step instructions. When it finishes, it verifies the install and makes the tool ready to use, without restarting the app.

Formatting and Linters have their own sections (external formatter/linter per language, with Add from a catalog). To carry your preferences to another machine, the Settings migration group (General section) has Export/Import settings (a .lnconf file): the general options and content themes go, but not the API keys or local paths (re-enter those on the target).

The window title is a free-form template: the app name always comes at the end and you compose the rest with the variables {workspace} (workspace root folder), {file} (open file name) and {path} (full path). Decorations around an empty variable (e.g. the brackets in [ {workspace} ]) disappear on their own; leave the field blank for the default [ {workspace} ] {file} — .

Window layout. Under View → Window layout (or Settings → General → Window layout) you pick one of three presets — Modern (the default), Classic and Comfortable — or adjust each option on its own: show the menu bar at the top (with it on the ☰ button disappears, since both open the same menus), show labels next to the icons, put the toolbar and the sidebar on the left or on the right, and the icon size. Choosing a preset only fills in the options: changing any of them afterwards undoes nothing, the list simply starts showing "(custom)". The change takes effect right away, in every open window.