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otto-settings edits Otto’s configuration while it is running, so you can change how the desktop behaves without hand-writing TOML and without restarting anything you don’t have to.

First version. The app covers a good share of the configuration and is meant for daily use, but not every option in otto_config.toml has a control yet. Anything missing is still editable by hand. See Configuration.

Otto Settings on its Appearance pane: colour scheme, a blue accent swatch, rounded corners, frosting and where the window controls sit, with the sidebar of panes on the left

Opening it

Launch Settings from the Dock or the launcher, or run otto-settings.

What it edits

Pane	Covers
General	The window switcher, the display language, the renderer, and where the configuration file is
Appearance	Light or dark, accent colour, corners, frosting, window controls, interface font, GTK theme, the desktop background (image, layout, zoom and position — click the preview to keep a part in view) and widget, the desk, pointer and icon themes, and the top bar’s clock
Displays	Resolution, refresh rate and arrangement of connected monitors, and the global interface scale
Dock	Size, position, auto-hide, magnification, icon colorization
Keyboard	Layout and options, repeat rate, and the shortcut list
Dictation	The speech-to-text engine and whether its server runs, the language you speak, the hotword boost, and whether dictation starts at login
Trackpad & Mouse	Tap to click, drag lock, natural scrolling, click method, scroll and pointer speed
Sound	Interface sounds on or off and which sound theme to use, then a mixer like pavucontrol’s: each app’s volume and device, each device’s port, volume, mute and whether it is the default, and each sound card’s profile
Power	What the lid switch and the power button do
Lock & Login	Auto-lock timeout, which lock screen and greeter to run, and what starts at login
Search	What the file index is doing, which folders it covers, whether it skips code repositories and removable drives
Agents	The default agent for Ask, and each agent’s name, harness, command, permissions, model, folder and colour

How it works

The compositor owns the configuration file; the app is a D-Bus client. It reads the schema Otto publishes and sets values, and a value you change in the app is written back to the config file. There is no file watcher, though: edit the file by hand while the app is open and the app will not notice. Reopen it to see the change.

Nearly everything applies the moment you change it: the Dock’s size and behaviour, the keyboard layout and repeat, the touchpad and pointer options, appearance and accent colour, the sound, power and lock settings. Only the interface font, the display scale, the GTK theme, the display language, the greeter and the renderer need a restart, and the app badges those and only those — a badge you can catch lying is a badge you stop reading.

Displays

The Displays pane probes the outputs that are actually connected, so the modes listed are the ones your monitor reports, not a guess.

Resolution, refresh rate, the primary display, arrangement and subpixel text are saved under [displays.named.<connector>] in the config file and take effect at the next login. They follow the connector the monitor is plugged into, not the monitor itself, so a monitor moved to another port starts from its defaults there. See Display configuration.

Scale is the exception: it is bound, but it is the global screen_scale, not a per-display value.

Subpixel text is per display and is saved: it writes the monitor’s subpixel key under [displays.named.<connector>]. Automatic leaves it to the monitor and fontconfig; if letters show coloured edges, try BGR. It applies at the next login, or when that monitor is next plugged in. See Display configuration.

Renderer

The Renderer row in General picks the GPU API Otto draws with: Vulkan, the default, or OpenGL. It applies to the login session only, since a windowed session (otto --winit or --x11) always uses OpenGL, and it takes effect after you log in again. Run Settings inside a windowed session and the row shows OpenGL with a note instead of a menu. Vulkan needs a working Vulkan driver for your GPU (on Arch, vulkan-icd-loader plus vulkan-intel or vulkan-radeon). Where it cannot start, Otto logs why and draws that session with OpenGL, and the row then says Vulkan isn’t available here instead of offering it. The setting is renderer under [rendering] in the config file, and otto --tty-udev --renderer gl overrides it for one session.

Shortcuts

The Keyboard pane lists the configured shortcuts and lets you add and remove them. It edits the same [keyboard_shortcuts] table the config file has, so anything you bind here is a normal entry you can also read and edit by hand.

Search

Search in Files finds things through a file index that LocalSearch keeps up to date in the background. The Search pane shows what it is doing: up to date with how many files it holds, indexing with how far it has got, paused, or not running (with Start). If LocalSearch isn’t installed, the pane says so and nothing else: install the localsearch package and open it again.

Each folder the index looks in has its own row. The − at the end of a row takes that folder out, and Choose… on Add Folder opens a folder picker to add one. A folder already in the list, or inside one that is, isn’t added twice; the pane says which folder already covers it. Take every folder out and nothing is indexed, so search finds nothing.

Skip code repositories leaves out any folder with a .git folder inside, and Search removable drives indexes USB sticks and other drives while they’re plugged in. Everything applies at once. If results look out of date, Re-index on the Re-index Home row has the index check your home folder again.

These live in the [search] section of Otto’s configuration, and Otto hands them on to LocalSearch:

[search]
folders = ["~", "/mnt/data"]     # ~ is your home folder
skip_code_repositories = true
index_removable_drives = false

A key you never set, here or in the file, leaves LocalSearch’s own value alone. Open the pane directly with otto-settings --pane search.

Agents

The Agents pane edits ~/.config/otto/agents.toml, the file behind Ask. The agent service only reads it when it starts, so changes here wait: press Apply to save them and restart the service, or Revert to drop them. Both stay greyed out until there is something to save. The Agent service row at the top says whether the service is running, with Start or Restart. Apply also runs otto-agents plugins install, which gives every harness other than Claude Code its own copy of the instructions. Hermes is the one it can’t finish: it needs a profile for each set of instructions, and the pane tells you the hermes profile create line to run. Only the keys you changed are written, so your comments and anything the pane doesn’t show stay put. An empty model means the agent’s own default, and an empty folder means Ask starts its sessions in a scratch folder, ~/.local/state/otto/ask. New agent adds one on Claude Code, and each agent’s Rename and Remove buttons do what they say; nothing is written until you apply.

Picking another Harness (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes or pi) sets the agent up for it: the command, how it finds Otto’s instructions, and how Ctrl+O continues a session in a terminal. It also clears the model, since each harness names models differently. The Command field changes the command alone.

Instructions picks who the agent is. Default runs the harness as itself (Claude Code as plain Claude Code), otto is Otto’s own, and below that are the agent files you’ve added under ~/.local/share/otto/plugins/<plugin>/agents/ (see Add an agent of your own). Open next to Instructions file opens the one in use, and Open next to Configuration file opens agents.toml itself. See Ask and Agents for what each setting does.

Dictation

The Dictation pane edits ~/.config/otto/dictation.toml. Changes apply to the next dictation — Ctrl+D in the launcher, or otto-dictate toggle bound to a shortcut for other apps — with nothing to restart. The OTTO_DICTATE_URL, OTTO_DICTATE_LANGUAGE and OTTO_DICTATE_HOTWORDS_BOOST environment variables still win over the file.

Engine picks Parakeet, Whisper (English only) or CrispASR. Picking one starts its speech server, otto-stt-<engine>, stops the others, and makes it the one that starts at login.
Speech server says whether that server is running, with Start or Restart. “Not installed” means the engine hasn’t been set up yet: components/otto-dictate/engines/install.sh <engine> does it.
Language is the language you speak, or Automatic to let the engine tell. Parakeet and CrispASR always detect it themselves.
Hotword boost appears with CrispASR: how strongly it favours the names the field expects, such as app names in the launcher. Above 6 it starts to garble the words around them.
Start dictation at login turns otto-dictate’s entry in ~/.config/autostart on or off. Off hides the entry rather than deleting it. Otto only reads that folder with xdg_autostart = true (see Autostart).

From the keyboard

Every row is a Tab stop with a ring around it, and every control can be operated without a pointer — Space or Enter flips a switch, presses a button, opens a pop-up or starts editing a field; the arrows move a slider. A pop-up opens on its current value rather than cycling, because each value commits as soon as it is chosen. See Accessibility.

Two things still need the pointer: dragging screens around the arrangement diagram in the Displays pane, and the shortcut lines in the Keyboard pane.

Not there yet

Not every configuration key has a control; the file remains the complete surface.
Display mirroring, which the compositor does not do yet either.