Preferences window enables you to customise the operation of Texpad. It may be reached via the Texpad Preferences menu or Cmd-,. Each setting is accompanied by a short description that serves as a quick guide to its intended use.

## General Preferences

### Notifications

These are preferences related to the notification system in Texpad.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Show Soft Notifications | Soft notifications are Growl-like notification messages, designed to be minimally disruptive to the writing flow.
Animate Button for Auto-Typesetting | You can choose to not have the typeset button spinning when the typeset operation is kicked off in the background as a result of auto-typeset being on.

### View Options

These are preferences related to what panes should show and stay in focus as you work on your projects in Texpad.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Keep editor in focus | Keep cursor focused in editor after a typeset.
Hide Outline on open | Automatically hide the Outline View when opening documents
Single-click PDF sync with editor | Check this option if you want a single click on the PDF pane to change focus to the editor.

### Troubleshooting

To help when things go wrong.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Restore Default Options | User preferences may be reset to their factory defaults using this button. Any user customisations will be lost and will need to be re-applied.

## Automations

### Miscellaneous

Various automations settings across Texpad.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Auto Completion | If checked Texpad will attempt to guess the command as you are typing it.
Auto Indent | If checked each line will be indented to match the previous line.
Automatch `\\begin` with `\end` | If checked Texpad will supply a matching `\end{...}` command for every `\\begin{...}` command you type.
Autosave on Typeset | Check this to silently save before typesetting.

### Snippets

Snippets are seen as automating entering of frequently-used blocks of LaTeX source code.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
The base hotkey | Snippets may be inserted using the Snippets menu or a hotkey such as Ctrl or Ctrl-Shift associated with the snippet. The default is Ctrl-Shift.

### File Loading

Settings for automatically loaded files through LaTeX tags such as `\include` or `\input`.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Suppress .def files | Stop Texpad from automatically chain loading .def files and displaying them in the Outline View.

## Editor Preferences

### Miscellaneous

General settings for the editor.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Show Line Numbers | Check this to display line numbers along the left hand edge of the editor pane.
Continuous Spell-Checking | Turn on/off inline spell checking.

### Editor Themes

Themes allow customising background and syntax colours of the editors. There is a list of five themes on offer.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
The list of themes | Standard themes based on various colour schemes to suit your editor preferences. The preview box below demonstrates how the theme may look in the editor.
Editor font | The font used to display your LaTeX source. This has no effect on the PDF output.
Editor text size | The size of the font used to display your LaTeX source. This has no effect on the PDF output.
Use default font for theme | Each theme comes with a default font. Clicking this button would restore that.

## Typesetting Preferences

### General Typesetting Options

These are general Texpad-wide typesetting option applicable to all projects.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Auto-typeset by default | Whether to set auto-typeset for projects when they are opened. This option may then be changed for an open window via the on/off button on the toolbar.
Default typesetter<>/span | Whether to use auto-detect as default typesetter for projects. This may also be changed after the project is opened.
`-shell-escape` | Run LaTeX with the `-shell-escape` option. This is necessary for packages such as gnuplot and minted, but it introduces a potential security hole, so it is turned off by default in Texpad.
Hide intermediate files | (Use of .texpadtmp directory.) In an effort to keep your working directories clean and free of LaTeX’s intermediate files, Texpad stores these files inside a hidden .texpadtmp directory created in the same directory as the LaTeX root file. The Typeset Remove Intermediate Files menu item will delete this directory, and the intermediate files it contains. Please note that certain external tools you may be using, such as gnuplot, rely on the intermediate files to be present in the same directory as the root .tex file in order to work properly.
Level of details in LaTeX error log | Level of detail to be reported in the Error Log. In addition to the minimal TeX Errors Only reporting, you may choose to see detailed LaTeX warnings as well as TeX’s hair-splitting layout alerts such as overfull or underfull hboxes.

### Underlying Typesetting Engine(s)

Texpad comes with five standard options for the underlying typesetting tool, which may be set here.

Choose between typesetting directly to a PDF with pdfTeX, or typesetting to DVI with tex, and then converting to PDF. The latter option is appropriate if you intend to embed EPS figures, or you want DVI output. To embed EPS in pdfTeX, you must convert them to PDF first with the eps2pdf tool in your LaTeX distribution.

### Bibliography Compilation

Texpad currently supports BibTeX and Biber bibliography engines. In addition, when using BibTeX, further environment variables `BIBINPUTS` and `BSTINPUTS` may be set to handle non-standard locations of bibliography (.bib) and style (.bst) files respectively. Note that most users will not need to fill these fields.

## Managing LaTeX Distribution

### LaTeX Installations

Texpad does its best to ensure you are guided through to a installing a working LaTeX distribution, if you do not already have one on your system.

Setting | Explanation
--- | ---
Installed LaTeX distributions | Texpad finds and lists all available distributions. This list provides a means to switch between them, but most users are urged to choose the standard distribution, generally installed in /usr/texbin by installation tools of MacTex.
Set Custom Distribution | Most users will find their standard LaTeX installation has already been detected and set for use by Texpad. If you’ve installed LaTeX in a non-standard location, you may have to manually set it (only if it’s not listed in the auto-searched list) by clicking on Set Custom Distribution button and selecting the directory where LaTeX binaries may be found.
Health Check of the Selected Distribution | Texpad checks that binaries it needs for typesetting your LaTeX documents are indeed present in the distribution it has been told to use. It shows you the results of its findings in this section.
Download MacTex | A link to the download page of latest version of LaTeX from the Mac-specific distribution called MacTex.

### Ghostscript Installation

A working ghostscript installation is needed for tools such as ps2pdf that are used to convert Postscript files to PDF. You may not needs this if you do not use the chain that requires ps2pdf.