Settings Walkthrough
The settings modal has six tabs and a couple dozen individual knobs, and a fair number of users open it for the first time on day one, feel overwhelmed, close it, and never come back. That’s fine — most of the defaults are tuned to just work, and you genuinely don’t need to touch the majority of settings to use Ishvana day to day. But a few settings matter a lot for getting Ishvana actually working the way you want it to, and this page walks through which ones those are so you don’t spend an hour in the modal when you really only need to touch four things. Everything below is the short version. For the full reference on every setting, click through to the dedicated Settings pages under the Settings section.
Open Settings from the gear icon in the top bar. The core tabs are General, Editor, Email Accounts, Performance & Hardware, Divinity Engine, and Licensing. The old Models tab is gone; v1.2.0 replaced provider setup with bundled local handlers.
What matters on day one
Section titled “What matters on day one”The four knobs you actually need to set before Ishvana feels usable:
- License activation — required for anything other than the trial to work. See Licensing below.
- Theme — dark or light, purely a preference. Takes about three seconds.
- Auto-save interval — the default is 2 seconds, which works for most people. Only adjust if you have a specific reason.
- Performance tier — check this if deep analysis feels slow or if you have just changed GPU drivers.
Everything else can wait. The Email tab doesn’t matter until you decide to use Ishvana’s email features. Divinity Engine pack management and rule tuning matter only after you know which analysis surfaces you use most.
General
Section titled “General”Theme, notifications, analytics toggle, and a few other app-wide preferences. Most users set this once on day one and never open it again.
- Theme. Dark or Light. The default is Dark because most writing sessions happen in low-light conditions. Switch if you prefer Light.
- Notifications. All, Important, or None. The default is Important, which surfaces errors and major events but stays quiet about routine things like save confirmations.
- Analytics. Track writing sessions and goals. Default on. Disable if you don’t want the writing stats panel to collect data — though the stats are local-only, not uploaded anywhere, so privacy isn’t a real concern.
Full reference: Settings → General.
Editor
Section titled “Editor”How the writing surface behaves. The auto-save interval is the one people actually tweak; the rest are set-and-forget.
- Auto-save. On by default. Saves every 2 seconds incrementally. Leave it on.
- Auto-save interval. 0.5 to 10 seconds. Default 2. Only adjust if you have a specific reason.
- Spell check. Uses the OS-native spell checker. Default on. Add custom words to your personal dictionary via right-click.
- Content width. 600 to 1400 pixels. Default 760 — the width that produces comfortable 65-85 character lines. Widen if you prefer more text per line; narrow if you want a single-column printed-page feel.
Full reference: Settings → Editor.
Divinity Engine
Section titled “Divinity Engine”The Divinity Engine tab covers local authored-library and rule-learning behavior. You do not enter provider credentials here. Instead, this is where you manage bundled response packs, review imported variants, and adjust rule visibility when you want specific findings to stay prominent or stay quiet.
- Pack Manager. Browse and install authored-library expansion packs.
- Variant Review. Review new prose variants before they become active.
- Rule visibility learning. Rules you engage with stay visible; rules you ignore drift down.
- Per-rule overrides. Pin a rule to always show or always hide regardless of learned behavior.
Full reference: Engine → Etherforce and Settings → Models for the historical page that explains what was removed.
Email Accounts
Section titled “Email Accounts”Only matters if you plan to use Ishvana’s Email module for author correspondence. If you’re handling email in Gmail or another client and you don’t want Ishvana to touch it, skip this tab entirely — it’s optional.
If you are going to use it: add each of your email accounts with SMTP and IMAP credentials, test the connection, done. Most providers (Gmail, Fastmail, Outlook) require an app password rather than your regular account password.
Full reference: Settings → Email Accounts.
Performance & Hardware
Section titled “Performance & Hardware”Hardware tier detection and performance tuning. You probably won’t visit this tab unless something feels slow. On first launch, Ishvana detects your machine’s specs and picks reasonable defaults (high-end / balanced / standard / basic tier). The defaults work for most users.
What’s here if you do visit:
- Detected hardware tier (read-only). The classification Ishvana picked for your machine.
- GPU probe. Test whether your GPU is detected and usable. Useful after driver updates.
- Alert thresholds. When to warn you about CPU or memory pressure.
- Cache TTL and size. How long cached data stays valid and how much memory the cache can use.
- Undo depth. How many undo steps the editor keeps in memory per document.
Full reference: Settings → Performance & Hardware.
Licensing
Section titled “Licensing”License activation, machine management, and trial status. You’ll visit this tab once to activate your license on first launch and never again unless you’re moving to a new machine or something goes wrong.
- Enter a license key to activate on this machine.
- Start a 14-day trial by entering your email if you don’t have a license yet.
- View activation status — license type, expiration, machines used vs. limit.
- Deactivate this machine to free up a slot when you’re moving to a new computer.
Full reference: Settings → Licensing.