Every setting
What Settings offers, in the order it is drawn. It opens on the account: Your Plan where this server has one, Your Profile, and Appearance with the theme. Under those come the rows Settings has always drawn by hand — read receipts, keystore sync, notifications, sounds, the strong-language filter, compact messages, text size, the clock, Enter sends and the Do Not Disturb schedule — and then the ones below, group by group; the sections for second factors, devices, keys and the rest follow them. Find a setting… at the top finds a section as well as a row, and every word typed has to match.
Accessibility comes first of the groups below, and everything in it is gathered under that one heading: the font and line spacing, wider letter and word spacing, high contrast, reduced motion and transparency, underlined links, larger buttons, a thicker focus ring, full-size scrollbars, what a screen reader is told, and whether opening a thread moves the cursor. A deployment being assessed against Section 508 or WCAG should not have to hunt for them.
| Section | Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | Font | The face everything is set in. Rounded is the wider, more open one some people read more easily. | system |
| Accessibility | Line spacing | How much air between the lines of a message. | normal |
| Accessibility | Wider letter and word spacing | Messages set with more air between letters, words and lines, as some readers need. | off |
| Accessibility | High contrast | Stronger text and edges on every theme. | off |
| Accessibility | Reduce motion | No slides, fades or bounces anywhere in the app, whatever the system setting says. | off |
| Accessibility | Reduce transparency | Menus, dialogs and the picture viewer sit on solid color instead of a blur. | off |
| Accessibility | Underline links | Every link in a message underlined, not only colored — so color is never the only thing that marks one. | off |
| Accessibility | Larger buttons | Every button at least 44 pixels tall — easier under a finger or a shaky hand. | off |
| Accessibility | Thicker focus ring | A wider outline on whatever the keyboard is on. | off |
| Accessibility | Thicker scrollbars | The browser's full-size scrollbars instead of the thin ones. | off |
| Accessibility | Tell a screen reader about new messages | A message arriving in the open thread is read out — who, and what. Nothing you can hear without a screen reader. | on |
| Accessibility | Read out messages from other threads too | With Tell a screen reader about new messages on, a screen reader also hears what arrives in threads that are not open, with where it is. Muted threads stay quiet. | off |
| Accessibility | Put the cursor in the message box when a thread opens | Off, opening a thread leaves the focus where it was — a screen reader can read the thread first. | on |
| Reading | Centered column | On a wide screen, keep the messages in a readable column in the middle instead of stretching edge to edge. | off |
| Reading | Dense messages | A lighter trim than the Compact messages switch above: less air between messages and inside each bubble, with the lines inside left as they were. With Compact messages on as well, that one wins. | off |
| Reading | Time zone | Times as this device keeps them, or in UTC for everyone in one place. | device |
| Reading | Show @handles beside display names | Over a run of messages, the username beside a display name that differs from it — so two people who chose the same display name are told apart. | off |
| Reading | Do not load pictures on their own | A picture in a message waits for a press. Also on whenever the browser asks to save data. | off |
| Writing | Spellcheck | Let the browser underline misspellings in the message box. | on |
| Writing | Shrink photos before sending | Over 2000 pixels or a megabyte and a half, a photo is sent at 2000 pixels as a JPEG — and without the camera's location data. PNGs are sent as they are. | on |
| Writing | Show others when I am typing | Off, nothing about your typing leaves this device. | on |
| Writing | Show me when others are typing | The “… is typing” line under the messages. | on |
| Writing | Ask before sending a file | A dialog names the files and asks, before anything leaves. | off |
| Writing | Ask before @everyone or @here | A message that would wake the whole room asks first. | off |
| Notifications & sounds | Ring on this device | Off, a call still shows its card here and rings on your other devices. | on |
| Notifications & sounds | In rooms, notify me only when mentioned | A room's messages raise no notification unless one names you, or everyone. | off |
| Notifications & sounds | Message sound | Which note the app makes. Sounds are turned off altogether by the Sounds switch above. | yeet |
| Notifications & sounds | Show how many are waiting | The unread count in the tab's name, a dot on the tab's icon, and — where Yeetline is installed — the number on its icon in the dock or taskbar. | on |
| Calls | Noise suppression | The browser's filter over your microphone. Off for music, or a voice the filter keeps eating. | on |
| Calls | Join room calls muted | Unmute with M, or hold Space to talk. | off |
| Rail | Room order | Role rooms come first either way; the rest as they were made, or A to Z. | created |
| Rail | Rail width | How wide the list of threads is on a desk. | normal |
| Rail | Open at sign-in | Which thread the app opens on: the one you were in, the first in the rail, #general, or Saved messages. | last |
| Rail | Compact rail | Shorter rows in the list of threads, so more fit. | off |
| Rail | Unread threads first | Within rooms and within direct messages, the ones with something unread rise to the top. | off |
| Rail | Hide offline people | Only who is here now under Online; the Offline list is folded away. | off |
| Rail | Hide the people list | The Online and Offline lists are folded away; threads only. | off |
| Rail | Pronouns beside names | In the people list and a room's member list, when someone has set them. | on |
38 settings, read from the table Settings itself is drawn from. A switch only staff are shown is not among them.
Each follows the account to every device it is signed in on, through the same sealed keystore the keys travel in.
Email is the one section that is not kept that way: it is the server that sends the mail, so it is the server that keeps which kinds you have switched off. It lists Activity, Staff digests and Product updates with a switch each, and names what is always sent. It is there only when the server you are on offers it, and only for an account that gets email. The email you are sent has the rest.
What is not here any more
Forty-two switches and choices were taken out. The question asked of each was the one asked of the feature switches and of the server's settings before them: who turns this off? For a bubble's corner radius, three separate ways to fade a row in the rail, a second spacing control beside the one above it, a sticker's size, an avatar's shape and the rest, the honest answer was nobody — and a setting nobody changes is not a choice, it is something to read past on the way to the ones that matter.
What went is on by default now, or simply how the app is drawn: a message of nothing but emoji is large, an unread thread is bold, your own picture in a call is mirrored, voice messages play one after another, the tab asks before it closes on something unsent, and a call silences the message notes. A value stored for one of them is dropped the next time the keystore is opened; nothing is migrated, and nobody is told, because most of them were never knowingly turned on.
Last changed 2026-10-04