Theme & appearance

Settings → Theme & appearance (Beta) covers two things: how the app is coloured and textured, and how the navigation is laid out. Every option applies instantly and persists with your data — it survives restarts and new machines.

Light / dark

Option	Behaviour
Follow system	Reads the OS preference and follows it live
Light	Always light
Dark	Always dark

Accent palette

Six accents: classic blue, violet, cyan, emerald, amber, rose. Implementation-wise the whole Tailwind --color-blue-* / --color-indigo-* ramp is hue-shifted and chroma-scaled, so buttons, selection states, links and focus rings recolour at once — no per-component class changes.

Canvas background

Six canvases: solid, dawn, dusk, grid, dots, aurora. The background is painted on body while page content areas stay transparent, so the canvas colour shows through the gaps between cards and panels — which is exactly what makes the acrylic material readable.

Canvas	Light	Dark
Solid	Near-white base	Near-black base
Dawn / dusk	Pink→blue→cyan / warm orange→violet→blue gradient	Same families, dark
Grid / dots	26px / 22px light texture	Same grid, dark
Aurora	Three soft light blobs (violet / cyan / blue)	Same hues, saturated

Acrylic material

One switch for the whole app: cards, panels, pill tracks, nav bar and rail, inputs, toggles and filter chips all become a translucent material — tinted base + backdrop blur with saturation boost + fine noise + a top sheen, so the canvas colour bleeds through.

The material lives on ::before: putting backdrop-filter on the host would turn it into the containing block for floating layers and misplace dropdowns
Form controls (input / textarea) do not render pseudo-elements, so the material is painted on the host and the native white background is disabled
The nav bar and left rail use a denser material so they don't vanish on light canvases; pill tracks stay more transparent so the canvas shows through
Switching it off returns every surface to plain white cards / grey tracks with no blur cost

Canvas background picker and acrylic switch with the canvas bleeding through panels — Canvas backgrounds and the acrylic switch: the canvas colour shows through the panels.

Option	Values
Primary nav style	Top bar (default) / vertical pills (nav moves to the far left, icon and label stacked) / vertical list (nav moves to the far left, icon and title on one line, collapsible into a narrow rail)
Secondary menu style	Flat (parent and child menus side by side) / tree (merged into one tree, expand a parent to see children)
Pinned entries	Unpinned features stay reachable from the “More” menu; notes, chat, Code, workflows and search are always pinned
Hover tooltips	Card (default, frosted) / solid (dark capsule) / outline (thin border plus blur); direction can be auto, top, bottom, left or right

Appearance is currently labelled Beta: options and defaults may still change between releases, but everything you pick is persisted and survives upgrades.

Where settings live

Theme, accent, canvas, acrylic switch and nav styles are stored in the backend settings table — the same mechanism as name and language under App settings
The frontend prewarms these settings on startup, so a refresh or a fresh install shows your saved appearance immediately instead of flashing the default skin
API: GET /api/settings to read, PUT /api/settings to write (keys Theme / ThemeAccent / Background / GlassEffect / NavStyle / SecondaryMenuStyle)