Light, dark, or automatic: choose whether the application follows the system or uses a fixed mode.
Preset themes: select from built-in visual palettes.
Customization: adjust primary color, border intensity, backgrounds, and surfaces.
Import and export theme: save a visual setup or reuse an existing one.

Appearance screen with light and dark modes, preset themes, and color customization

Editor and preferences

Editor typography: adjust font, text size, spacing, and reading width.
Editor behavior: configure autosave, spellcheck, smart punctuation, toolbar mode, and related preferences.
General preferences: language, color-blind mode, outline density, notifications, and panel behavior.

AI

The AI tab is optional. It centralizes provider, model, credentials, and connection testing for people who want assisted research, Ask mode, or Book Chat memory.

Where to configure it: open Settings → AI to centralize provider, model, key, timeout, and connection testing in one place. If you configure nothing, the app still works for writing, organization, metrics, and export.
Provider and model: choose between Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or Ollama. With cloud providers, the required calls go directly to the service you choose; Inkthar does not run its own AI server between your writing and the provider.
Your API key: after selecting a cloud provider, paste the key from your own account, adjust timeout if needed, and save. The app indicates when a key is already configured without exposing the full value. Review the chosen provider's privacy, retention, and model-training controls when available.
Local Ollama: if you prefer to avoid cloud AI providers, provide the local instance URL, list the available models, and select which one to use. In this case, no API key is required and model responses run on your own machine/local environment.
Test before using: after saving, use the built-in test to validate the setup before relying on it in assisted research, contextual search, or Ask mode.
Where this is used: the chosen configuration powers assisted research, contextual search, Ask mode, and Book Chat memory. It does not enable automatic writing, chapter rewriting, or ready-made passage suggestions.
Book Chat memory: to find passages before answering, the app uses embeddings. OpenAI, Gemini, and Ollama can generate embeddings; with cloud providers, the required passages are sent to the provider you choose.
Claude and embeddings: Anthropic can be the main answer provider, but it does not provide embeddings in the app. If you use Claude with Book Chat, configure a separate memory source: OpenAI, Gemini, or Ollama.
Contextual RAG: when enabled, it adds narrative context to indexed passages and uses extra AI calls while preparing memory.

What can leave the computer when using AI

Feature	Data used outside the local app	How to control it
Assisted research and Ask mode	Query, typed context, categories, and data required to generate or refine the answer; web search also queries external sources.	Use only when needed, choose the provider, and review its policies. Without AI configured, these flows do not run.
Book Chat	Question, recent history, current selection when available, project metadata, and relevant passages retrieved from memory.	Use Ollama to keep processing in your local environment, or a cloud provider under your own account.
Memory embeddings	Manuscript passages used to generate search vectors when the embedding provider is OpenAI or Gemini.	Choose Ollama as the embedding provider if you want to avoid this cloud step.
Contextual RAG	Passages being prepared can receive additional context through extra calls to the configured LLM.	Keep disabled if you want fewer AI calls during indexing.
Local Ollama	The app talks to the configured local URL for model and embedding calls.	Depends on your Ollama environment; no cloud-provider key required.

License

The License tab shows the current installation status and centralizes activation, validity, and machine binding.

Current status: see whether the installation is in trial, active, expired, or deactivated state, including dates and license origin.
Activation and validity: the area shows partial key, activation date, last validation, and expiration when applicable.
Machine binding: you can also review the device identifier and deactivate this machine before moving to another environment.

Backup and maintenance

This area covers backup export, data restore, update checks, and preference reset.

Export backup: generate a <code>.zip</code> file with your local data so you can keep a complete copy of the work outside the app.
Restore backup: when you need to return to an earlier state, you can import a saved backup and bring the project back into Inkthar.
Backup contents: the file includes the SQLite database, covers, entity images, and research files stored under storage.
Restore safety: restoring replaces the current local state with the imported backup. The app validates the file and attempts to preserve the previous state if restore fails, but exporting a backup before restoring is still recommended.
Updates: the app also keeps update-check preferences here so installation maintenance stays in the same panel.
Reset preferences: if you feel you experimented too much, you can return settings to their defaults without erasing the book's content.

Recommendation

Export a backup before restore operations or larger environment changes.

Backup section with actions to export, restore, and review application preferences

Purpose of this area

Settings centralizes application adjustments and reduces friction in daily use.

Before using assisted features

When using Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini, the content needed for that action — for example, the query, provided context, metadata, and/or relevant passages used by the feature — is sent to the provider you chose, under that provider's policies and your account controls. With local Ollama, this processing can stay in your environment. In all cases, Inkthar does not require AI for writing and does not send your manuscript to its own AI server.

Compile and print Ownership and security

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Settings and backup Appearance Editor and preferences AI License Backup and maintenance