Settings Reference

Use this page when you want to understand what each configurable option does in Notely.

1. Appearance

Theme

Open Settings -> Theme or View -> Theme.

• System: follows the operating system theme
• Light: always uses the light theme
• Dark: always uses the dark theme

Default: System

Use this when you want Notely to stay consistent with your desktop or when you need a fixed light or dark theme.

Font

Open View -> Font or Settings -> General -> App Font.

• Inter (Default): clean, modern UI typeface popular in developer tools
• JetBrains Mono: iconic developer coding monospace typeface from JetBrains IDEs
• Fira Code: developer programming typeface with distinct coding aesthetics
• Cascadia Code: Microsoft's official Windows Terminal and VS Code typeface
• Source Code Pro: Adobe's classic, balanced developer monospace typeface

Default: Inter (Default)

When chosen, the font is applied in real time across all labels, buttons, navigation items, dialogs, and UI controls, and persisted in global application configuration storage.

Zoom

Open View -> Zoom In, Zoom Out, or Reset Zoom.

• Minimum zoom: 75%
• Default zoom: 80%
• Maximum zoom: 200%

Use zoom when UI text or panels feel too small or too large on your display.

2. Landing View

View Mode

Open View -> Tile Notes, View -> Table Notes, or View -> Tree Notes.

• Tile Notes (Ctrl/Cmd + 1): visual cards with previews and summary details
• Table Notes (Ctrl/Cmd + 2): denser list-style view for scanning many notes quickly (double-click opens immediately)
• Tree Notes (Ctrl/Cmd + 3): hierarchical expandable/collapsible tree view showing nested subfolders, note status, drag-and-drop file organization, and file timestamps

Density

Open View -> Comfortable Density or Compact Density.

• Comfortable: more whitespace and larger rows
• Compact: denser rows for large workspaces

Use compact density when you want to see more notes at once.

3. Editor and Writing

Typo Check

Open Edit -> Enable Typo Check.

• When enabled, Notely checks note text for spelling and typo issues.
• It skips code and diagram content so it does not flag technical text unnecessarily.

Default: On

Outline

Open View -> Show Outline.

• Shows a headings-based side panel for the current note
• Hidden automatically while Focus Mode is active

Shortcut: Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + L

Focus Mode

Open View -> Focus Mode.

• Hides the outline and reduces surrounding distractions
• Useful for concentrated writing sessions

Shortcut: Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + F

4. Terminal

Show Terminal

Open View -> Show Terminal.

• Opens or hides the embedded terminal panel
• Useful for project-local commands while staying in Notely

Terminal Shell

Open View -> Terminal Shell.

• Auto: lets Notely choose the shell
• Bash: prefers Bash when available
• CMD: uses Windows Command Prompt

Use Bash if you prefer a Unix-style command line. Use CMD if you prefer standard Windows commands.

5. Screen Capture

Open Settings -> Screen Capture.

• Auto Insert: inserts the captured image immediately into the note
• Review Before Insert: opens the review editor before saving and inserting

Default: Auto Insert

The toolbar capture button shows the current mode:

• A = Auto Insert
• R = Review Before Insert

6. AI Settings

Open AI -> AI Settings.

Provider setup

• Text provider: choose the LLM service for writing, summarizing, or refactoring text (Google Gemini, Groq, or OpenAI / OpenAI-compatible).
• OpenAI Compatible: connect to OpenAI (gpt-4o, gpt-4o-mini) or any compatible endpoint by specifying your API key and Base URL.
• Local ONNX Models: vector embeddings (BGE-small-en-v1.5) and Knowledge Graph extraction (GLiNER2-Relex) run completely on-device and offline via onnxruntime-node.
• HuggingFace token: optional API token for cloud-based embeddings fallback.
• Test buttons: verify that your saved credentials and endpoint connections work.

Feature toggles

• Learn user patterns: lets the app remember how you use AI so it can be more helpful later
• Generate embeddings: turns on meaning-based search and related-note features
• Discover relationships: helps the graph and AI features find links between related notes
• Graph confidence threshold: controls the minimum confidence score (10% to 95%) required for neural-extracted entities and relationships. Adjusting this slider dynamically filters the Knowledge Graph visualization in real time.

Advanced generation tuning

• Max tokens: controls how long AI responses are allowed to be
• Temperature: controls how safe and predictable, or how varied and creative, the response feels

Use lower temperature for predictable output. Use higher temperature for brainstorming or variation.

Speech-to-Text (STT) setup

Open the Speech-to-Text tab in AI Settings:

• Transcription Engine:
  • Local ONNX Whisper (Offline, In-Browser / WebAssembly): default offline engine; runs private on-device transcription.
  • Groq Cloud Whisper: utilizes Groq's high-throughput whisper-large-v3 for sub-second transcriptions using your configured Groq API key.
  • OpenAI Cloud Whisper: utilizes OpenAI's whisper-1 model using your configured OpenAI API key.
• Local Whisper Model: Select from whisper-tiny.en (~40MB, fastest), whisper-base.en (~140MB, balanced), or whisper-small (~460MB, multilingual).
• Default Audio Capture Mode: Choose default mode when launching recorder (Meeting: Mic + System Audio, Microphone Only, System Audio Only).
• Primary Spoken Language: Specify expected audio language (or Auto-Detect).
• Auto-transcribe toggle: Automatically triggers Speech-to-Text generation as soon as an audio or meeting recording is stopped.

Data and privacy controls

• Shows where AI-related app data is stored on your device
• Lets you clear saved AI working data and learned behavior

7. Workspace Ignore Policy and Git Safety

Notely includes a unified Workspace Ignore Policy engine (workspaceIgnorePolicy.cjs) that standardizes exclusion rules across all background scanners (File Tree, Knowledge Graph, Semantic Embeddings, Document Extractions, Task Database, MCP Tool Suite, and External AI IDE Bridges):

• Built-in Exclusions: Hidden IDE directories (.git, .vscode, .cursor, .agents), build/cache directories (node_modules, dist, build, coverage, chunks), and test folders (tests, spec, fixtures) are automatically excluded from note trees and indexing.
• .notelyignore Support: Create a .notelyignore file in your workspace root to define custom glob patterns or directory names to exclude from Notely scanning.
• Git Safety Toggle:
  • Ignore .notes-app: On: automatically appends .notes-app/ to .gitignore under # >>> Notes App Managed >>>.
  • Ignore .notes-app: Off: leaves Git ignore management to you.
• AI IDE Bridge Isolation: When external AI bridges are initialized, Notely manages an isolated .gitignore block (# >>> Notely AI IDE Bridge Managed >>>) keeping machine-specific tokens and generated context safely out of version control without interfering with workspace settings.

8. Model Context Protocol (MCP) Configuration

Configure MCP settings under AI -> MCP Settings or via mcp-config.json:

• MCP Server Port: Listening port for Streamable HTTP and SSE transport (default: 3700).
• Authentication Token: Optional Bearer token for authenticating external MCP clients.
• Allow Write Tools: Master permission toggle (allowWriteTools). When disabled, all mutating tools (edit_note, manage_tasks, manage_diagrams, git_control) are completely hidden and blocked, ensuring read-only safety for external agents.

9. Environment Variables

Notely respects system environment variables for advanced runtime configuration:

Variable	Values	Purpose
NOTELY_TERMINAL_POLICY	permissive | strict	Sets execution policy for embedded terminal. strict enforces role and command allowlists.
NOTELY_TERMINAL_REQUIRED_ROLE	developer (default)	Required user role when operating in strict terminal policy.
NOTELY_TERMINAL_ALLOWLIST	Comma-separated strings	Allowed command executables in strict terminal mode (e.g. git,npm,node).
NOTELY_BASH_PATH	File path	Explicit path to Bash binary on Windows hosts.
GIT_BASH_PATH	File path	Fallback Git Bash executable path on Windows hosts.
NOTELY_LOG_LEVEL	debug | info | warn | error	System logging threshold for LogDB.
NOTES_ROOT	Workspace path	Environment variable override for default workspace directory path.