App settings — What can I configure?

Where do I find the app settings?

In the Gallery, tap the gear icon in the top bar. This is a different screen from the small gear you see inside a project — that one is per-project settings. Anything in this sheet applies to the whole app, across every project.

What does “Appearance” control?

A System / Light / Dark segmented picker. “System” follows your iPad’s own appearance setting; the other two pin StitchPencil to one look regardless of the system setting.

Under it sits Accent color: a row of six — orange, indigo, teal, pink, green, graphite. Buttons, frames, highlights and the marks on the canvas all follow the one you pick. Orange is what ships and is unchanged by the setting existing. The row is curated rather than a free color picker on purpose: every tone is checked against the warm light chrome and the dark one, so no choice can leave you with a label you cannot read.

What does “Show explanations in the inspector” do?

The inspector explains most of its controls in a grey line underneath — what a bean stitch is, what the trapunto inset does. Once you know them, they only take room. Switch this off and those lines disappear at once; the inspector gets much shorter. What a setting says about the selected object stays: warnings, counts, “the hoop is holding the marks” and everything the design check reports. On by default, and every explanation is in this handbook as well.

What does “Draw with finger” do?

It’s off by default — with it off, only the Apple Pencil draws, and a finger only pans/zooms/selects. This avoids accidental strokes from your palm resting on the screen. If you try to draw with a finger while it’s off, StitchPencil shows a one-time hint offering to turn the option on, so it’s discoverable without reading the manual.

What does “Undo and redo by tapping” do?

It is the switch for the finger gestures: a two-finger tap on the canvas undoes, a three-finger tap redoes. Switch it off if a brief two-finger touch between two pinch grips keeps reading as a tap. The arrows in the top bar and the Pencil’s double tap are not affected — the Pencil gesture has its own setting. See Gestures.

What does the “Tool bar side” setting do?

Switches the tool rail — and every panel that docks next to it — between the left and right edge of the screen, for right- or left-handed use. You don’t have to come here to change it: there’s also a small ⇄ chip at the very bottom of the tool rail itself that does the same thing without leaving the editor. See Gestures for more on that shortcut.

What does “Add new objects at the end” do?

It decides where a freshly drawn object lands in the layer list. Off — the default — inserts it directly after the layer you have selected, so it sews next: the way a layer-based drawing app behaves. On puts every new object at the end of the list, where it sews last and covers everything under it. With nothing selected, both settings append.

Two things are worth knowing with it off. The object you just drew becomes the reference for the next one, so several strokes in a row stay together instead of scattering. And an object inserted in the middle can be covered by something that sews later — that is correct behaviour, not a glitch, and the Layers panel shows you exactly where it sits.

What is “Screen recording” for?

It draws every touch on top of the app, so a recording shows what your hand did. A capture card records the screen, and the screen says nothing about the hand: without this, a video of drawing is a video of shapes appearing by themselves, and nobody watching can tell a pencil stroke from a two-finger pan.

The Apple Pencil appears as a small purple point that grows with pressure — which is worth seeing, because pressure is what sets a satin column’s width while you draw. A finger appears as a wider teal circle. Both leave a short trail behind them, so a swipe reads as a swipe and a tap as a tap.

Hold last input sets how long a contact stays on screen after you lift, from 0.2 to 5 seconds, before it fades. A tap lasts a few frames; without the hold it is gone before the viewer has found it.

It is off by default, purely a display aid, and changes nothing about your design or the exported file.

What is the “Fit fills under satin borders” assistant?

When it’s on, drawing a fill underneath a closed satin border you already drew automatically snaps the fill’s edge to sit just inside that border — the two-step “draw satin outline, then draw a fill that matches it” workflow becomes one step. Turn it off if you’d rather size fills manually.

What is the “Hoops” list?

The hoops a new project can be made on — your own list, not a catalogue. It starts with the five shipped sizes; add the ones you own with Add hoop (a name is optional — “Janome SQ14b” reads better than 140 × 140 on the shelf), tap a row to rename or resize it, and swipe a row to remove it. The last hoop stays, and Restore the shipped hoops brings the five back without touching your own.

Removing a hoop is harmless: every project carries its hoop inside its own file, so nothing already made changes. A factory reset puts the five shipped sizes back and drops your own, the same way it treats custom Stitches. The list serves three places — the New Project sheet, the hoop chips in Project settings, and the stitch-file import, which opens a PES/DST/EXP on the smallest of your hoops the design fits. A design larger than all of them opens on a frame of its own size, and the import says so.

What does “Empty trash after 30 days” do?

Deleted projects sit in a trash area rather than disappearing immediately. With this on (the default), StitchPencil clears anything older than 30 days automatically the next time it starts. Turn it off if you want deleted projects to stay recoverable indefinitely.

What’s under “About”?

Read-only version and build-date information — handy to have on hand if you’re reporting a bug during the beta.

What does “Factory reset” do, and is it safe?

It’s a destructive action, deliberately placed behind two confirmation layers so it’s hard to trigger by accident:

1. Tapping Factory reset… opens a dialog with two distinct options:
   • Reset, keep projects — restores every app-wide setting (Stitch presets, HUD layout, color palettes, all the toggles above) to their defaults, but leaves your saved projects untouched.
   • Reset AND delete all projects… — the same reset, plus every project in the Gallery. This option asks for a second, separate confirmation before it does anything.

If you only want a clean slate for settings — say, to get back the original built-in Stitch presets — the first option is what you want. The second is genuinely permanent; there’s no undo once you confirm it.