Settings reference

Settings are grouped into General, Search, Vault, Backups, Plugins, and Updates. Some preferences are per vault; others must work before unlock and are stored in the application profile.

General

Global shortcut

Default:

• Windows: Win+Q
• Linux: Meta+Q
• macOS: ⌘+Q

Select the shortcut control, then press Ctrl, Alt, or the platform Meta key plus another supported key. Escape cancels recording.

Windows and macOS use Tauri's native global shortcut backend. Linux reads keyboard input devices directly and needs permission to open them. See Linux shortcut permission.

The shortcut is application-wide and stored in the local WebView profile.

Minimize after copy

When enabled, selecting a prompt's main Palette result:

1. copies the body;
2. closes the Palette;
3. hides onQ to the system tray.

The default is off. This setting is stored per vault.

Theme

Choose Dark or Light. Theme is stored per vault in the protected app-state row. Before unlock, the first paint uses Dark.

Language

Available UI languages:

• English
• Thai
• Spanish
• Chinese
• French
• German

The saved locale is application-wide and works before unlock. Without a saved choice, onQ matches the browser/WebView language and falls back to English.

Search

Embedding quantization

• Binary, default: binary ANN candidates plus exact cosine reranking.
• Dense: full-precision ANN after index rebuild.

Controls remain disabled while search is sparse-only because no embedding model is loaded. Changing mode rebuilds the derived embedding index.

Search status

The status panel reports:

• keyword index on;
• model loaded, cached, or not installed;
• model ID;
• sparse-only, binary ANN, dense pending, or dense live;
• refresh action.

Load MiniLM model downloads and loads the optional local model, then re-embeds all prompts. Once loaded, the same button is labeled Re-embed vault.

Active embedder

Built-in MiniLM is the functional default. Enabled plugins that advertise an embedding capability can appear in the selection list.

The current preference setter stores only in process memory. It does not yet replace the built-in AppState.embedder. See Feature status.

Search recency period

Default: 30 days. Allowed UI range: 1 through 3650.

The value controls how quickly the small recency ranking bonus decays. It does not remove old prompts or limit results to a date range.

Vault

Auto-lock

Policy	Behavior
Lock on quit only, default	No idle timeout; a new process must reopen the vault
Idle timeout	Clear the vault session after 1 to 1440 idle minutes
Disabled	Never auto-lock because of idle time or policy evaluation

Pointer, keyboard, and window-focus activity reset the idle timer. The frontend checks the policy every 15 seconds.

Locking clears the open vault and database handles from memory. It does not encrypt ordinary unlocked Markdown bodies. The auto-lock preference is application-wide and stored outside the vault so it can apply before unlock.

Use Lock vault in the Palette for an immediate session lock.

History retention

Default: 30 days. Allowed UI range: 0 through 3650.

The value controls body snapshots under .onq/history/. Pruning happens during prompt writes.

Import and export prompts

The current desktop picker selects a directory:

• Import recursively reads .md files up to four directory levels below the chosen directory.
• Files with valid onQ frontmatter preserve supported metadata.
• Plain Markdown gets a generated ID, a filename-derived title, and default metadata.
• Conflicting IDs are skipped by the UI path.
• Export writes every readable prompt as <id>.md into a selected directory.

The core also contains JSON-array and ChatGPT export importers, but the shipped Settings picker does not expose file selection for them. See Feature status.

Security audit log

Audit logging defaults to enabled. The Settings panel can disable it and list the newest 80 events.

Events can include:

• vault unlock and lock;
• backup import and export;
• Markdown import and export;
• prompt unlock;
• history restore;
• plugin install.

The append-only JSON Lines file is .onq/audit.log. Details can contain local paths or prompt IDs. The enabled preference is application-wide.

Authentication information

Password vaults show their auth mode.

Keychain vaults allow the raw derived vault secret to be displayed only after the matching 24-word recovery phrase is entered. Treat that value and the phrase as secrets. Close Settings after use.

Backups

The Backups section shows copyable absolute paths for:

• the vault root;
• .onq/search-index.

It can export or destructively import a full .onqbak archive. Archive password protection is independent of the vault's authentication mode.

The backup reminder defaults to seven days and appears when no recent full backup export is recorded. There is no reminder interval control in the current Settings UI.

Read Backups and portability before importing.

Plugins

The Plugins section can:

• install a .onqplugin, .tar, .gz, or .tgz selected by the file picker;
• list installed plugins;
• enable or disable a plugin;
• refresh state;
• uninstall a plugin.

The installer itself expects a gzip-compressed tar archive with manifest.toml, signature.sig, and a native library. It rejects an untrusted signature, a non-GPL-3.0-only license, a duplicate ID, and archive path traversal.

Plugins are native code with the same process privileges as onQ. Install only trusted packages. Read Plugin authoring for current runtime limits.

Updates

onQ silently checks the configured stable GitHub updater feed on launch. A manual check is available in Settings and from the Home version button.

The current action reports that a version is available or that onQ is current. It does not download and install the update from this UI. Follow the release link manually when needed.

Beta channel

The toggle persists a per-vault beta preference. Current updater configuration still uses the stable feed regardless of this value. Beta routing has not shipped.

Preference scope

Preference	Scope
Global shortcut	Application/WebView profile
Language	Application/WebView profile
Auto-lock policy	Application config
Audit enabled	Application config
Theme	Per vault
Minimize after copy	Per vault
Search recency period	Per vault
History retention	Per vault
Embedding quantization	Per vault
Beta preference	Per vault
Backup timestamp/reminder state	Per vault