Settings hold the handful of choices that shape how Nodes looks, reads, and helps. Open them with ⌘,.
There are five tabs: User, Collectibles, General, Agent, and About. Most of your day-to-day controls live in General. Agent is the background agent's home, and where you choose the model behind the on-device AI. About shows the version and a link to the website. Importing and exporting also live in the File menu - File ▸ Export… (⇧⌘E) and File ▸ Import… (⇧⌘I) - see import and export.
Editing helpers
Three switches tune how the editor behaves while you type, and each can be turned off:
- Auto-close brackets - automatically inserts the matching closing character when you type
(,[,[[, or{. - Markdown list helpers - Tab indents list items, Return continues a list or clears an empty marker,
-turns into a bullet, numbered lists carry on, and---expands to a horizontal rule. - Helper hints - section headers in the node inspector and on tag pages narrate what a click will do while you hover a control.
Appearance
Choose System, Light, or Dark. System follows whatever your Mac is set to.
Library backup
Two safety nets, side by side.
Archive - one Save Archive… button writes your whole library into a single .nodes file - every note, tag, and link - and a caption counts the notes, tags, and stickers going in. The archive restores exactly on import. This is the copy you carry: put it on an external drive, in a cloud folder, or on another Mac. Open Import… sits here too, so bringing a library in doesn't mean hunting through the File menu.
Automatic snapshots - daily recovery points of your whole library, kept inside Nodes on this Mac. snapshot now takes one on the spot, snapshots opens the list, and every restore sets your current library aside first, so it can be undone. The switch turns the whole thing off and deletes what's been kept. See library snapshots for the full picture.
This is all separate from File ▸ Export…, which exports notes as files.
Text & fonts
Pick the font your editor writes in, and set the text size anywhere from 8 to 72 pt. A carousel previews each font, and you can filter the catalog by style or script.
Placeholder quote
Pick the line shown on a blank note - a small bit of text waiting where your writing will go. A preview shows it in your chosen font.
Agent
The Agent tab runs the background agent. A master card holds the on/off switch and a live status line - working now, paused, all caught up, or off. Until a model is chosen the status reads "needs a model" and the switch stays disabled. While the agent works, a Right Now card narrates the note it's on and the queue behind it.
The Automatic card holds the power rules:
- Pause in Low Power Mode - holds the agent's queue while Low Power Mode is on; it resumes when the mode ends.
- Double speed when plugged in - halves the gap between notes while your Mac is on AC power.
- Agent speed - a slider from a gentle one note every 5 minutes up to a brisk 12 notes a minute.
The Library card draws one bar over your library showing how much the agent has reviewed, split into reviewed, partly, out of sync, and never. Image notes are excluded unless a vision-capable model is selected, and notes that opted out are not counted.
The Model card names the selected model - change drills into the model catalog - and holds the Primary Language picker.
Primary language
Pick the language most of your notes are written in - there are 13 to choose from. Everything the agent writes - suggested tags, descriptions, and reminders - comes out in this language. It starts from your Mac's language, so if you write in something else, set it here.