Settings drawer

Every DropTerm setting is editable in this in-app drawer, and every edit applies the moment you commit it - there is no Apply button. The one exception is the Profiles page’s edit form, a transactional draft with its own Save and Cancel.

Opening the drawer

Three ways in, all the same toggle:

• press Ctrl+Shift+I while the terminal has keyboard focus,
• pick “Settings…” in the terminal’s context menu,
• click the gear button at the right end of the tab strip.

The drawer is an overlay pinned to the right edge of the drop-down surface, so the terminal stays visible - and live-editable - the whole time: opening settings never hides or resizes the surface. The tab strip (with its gear) is always present, even with a single tab, so settings are one click away in every state. A second press of Ctrl+Shift+I toggles the drawer closed; there is never a second window.

The five tabs

Every exposed control appears exactly once across the tabs - none lost, none duplicated.

Switching tabs is a page turn only: the drawer never closes, nothing writes, and an in-flight draft survives (start typing in a field, flip tabs, flip back - the text is still there). Close, Escape, and a repeat Ctrl+Shift+I close the whole drawer from any tab; an explicit close resets it to Appearance, while a focus-loss hide preserves the open tab and its drafts.

Commits are per control kind: toggles, dropdowns, and the pickers write on change, sliders write on release (the value previews live while dragging), text inputs write on Enter. The profile form is the one buffered island - its writes collect behind an explicit Save.

Keybindings tab

The editor is a search box on top, then every bindable action grouped (Clipboard, Tabs, Zoom, Other). Each row shows its effective binding: the custom chord if one is set, otherwise every default chord joined (Ctrl + + / Ctrl + = / Ctrl + Shift + + / Ctrl + Shift + = for zoom-in), or None for actions that ship unbound. The full default table lives in keybindings.

Rebinding is two presses: press the row’s binding to arm the capture, then press the chord. While armed, the capture owns every key press - nothing reaches the terminal. Escape or the hint’s Cancel ends it without changes; capturing a chord another action already holds shows an inline error naming the holder and writes nothing.

Rules worth knowing:

• One binding per action: a new chord replaces the action’s previous bindings entirely; the row’s undo affordance reverts to the defaults.
• A committed rebind applies to the very next key press and persists across restarts.
• Editing the config file by hand while the app runs has the same effect - the file is watched. Entries with unknown ids or unparseable keys are skipped with a warning, never fatal.
• The on-disk shape is documented in configuration.

The numbered activation rows are one per digit, 1 through 8, with 9 as “Activate last tab”; the per-profile new-tab actions are deliberately not keybindable.

Profiles tab

The page holds the profile list, the edit form, and the default-profile picker. The list shows one row per profile in config order - the same order the tab bar +’s dropdown and the context menu’s submenu use. Each row is a thumbnail of the tab it opens: a scheme swatch chip (the profile’s palette miniaturized; a hollow frame when it follows the global look), the name above the command as a dimmed $ prompt line, and a default tag when the picker names this row. The row’s actions are tooltip’d icon buttons - edit pencil, clone, delete, move up/down - and clicking the identity column selects it.

Delete is two-step inline, never a dialog. A trash press arms that row - the trash becomes a Confirm / Keep pair right on the row. Only one row is ever armed. Confirming deletes immediately and, if the deleted profile was the default, clears the default in the same interaction.

While a form draft is open, the list is locked - every row button, the add button, and selection itself render disabled until Save or Cancel. The default-profile picker stays live, and an armed delete simply waits out the draft.

The edit form

The form is the drawer’s one buffered island: nothing writes until Save - the footer’s button or an Enter in any input. Its fields:

Save validates the whole draft at once and writes exactly once when every field passes: the command must parse to a program, the scheme (if set) must be a built-in, the font size must sit in the 6-32 band, the scrollback must be a number (clamping like the global input), and every env key must be non-empty and free of =. A failed Save writes nothing and shows every offending field’s inline error at once; typing in a field clears only its error. An unchanged Edit draft’s Save closes the form without writing; a valid Save closes on the row it wrote.

The scheme recolors the profile’s running tabs live; command, cwd, font size, scrollback, and env apply to the profile’s next spawn - a running tab is never re-launched. Add and Clone open the same form, Clone seeding a copy under a unique name (copy) name.

A draft is page-local: a focus-loss hide preserves it with the drawer, while leaving the tab - or closing the drawer - clears it and any armed delete, so a reopened Profiles page starts from the config. Cancel and Escape both drop the draft with no write; the drawer stays open beneath Escape.

While the drawer is open

Terminal input is inert - keyboard and pointer never reach the shell; the drawer’s own inputs type normally. Escape peels one layer at a time: an open picker popover (scheme or font) closes first, then an open profile draft cancels, and only with neither does Escape close the drawer (the surface stays). The drawer’s Close button and a repeat Ctrl+Shift+I close it too. Focus loss keeps working as configured: the surface hides with the drawer preserved exactly as it was, drafts and all.

When each edit takes effect

Each control states next to it when its edit applies, and the terminal is visible under the drawer, so the live keys show their effect the moment they land:

These toggles (the Tabs and Dropdown cards) default to true, which is exactly the pre-settings behavior:

• session_persistence_enabled is symmetric: false stops session saves and skips launch restore. The existing saved session is never deleted or rewritten by disabling.
• slide_animation_enabled: false restores instant show/hide.
• new_tab_after_current: false appends new tabs at the end of the list (Guake’s default ordering) instead of directly after the active tab. Ctrl+Shift+T, Ctrl+Shift+H, the tab bar’s +, and the remote new-tab follow it; duplicates always land after the active tab, and session restore keeps the saved order.
• close_confirmation_enabled: false restores instant, unconfirmed closes (configuration).

Input ranges and limitations

Controls constrain input to the same ranges as the config (height_percent 10-100, width_percent 30-100, opacity 0-100, scrollback_lines non-negative, autosuggestions_delay_ms a plain 0-65535 milliseconds - an out-of-band entry rejects rather than clamps); the write path never persists an out-of-range value. One known limitation: the args input splits on whitespace with no quoting support - arguments containing spaces stay config-file-only.