Preferences

Appearance

Setting	What it does
Mode	Light, System, or Dark. System follows the operating system's light or dark setting.
Theme	The color theme, as tiles. See Themes.
Language	English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, or German. English is the default; the window reloads when you switch. German is machine translated and marked as such.
Dark PDF pages in dark mode	Darkens the pages in the PDF preview when the mode is dark. Off, the pages keep their original colors.

Editor

Setting	What it does
Autosave	On by default. Off, changes save only when you press Save, and you are warned before switching files. Live preview and hosting a shared session keep it on.
Spell check	Off by default. See Spell check.
Comment button on selection	The floating button that offers to comment on selected text, in both editors.
Open terminal panel when compiling	Also opens Problems when a compile reports errors. Off, the badge next to Compile is the only signal.
Keybindings	Default, Vim, or Emacs, for the source editor. The mode line appears under the editor.

Source editor

Setting	What it does
Wrap long lines	In Source mode, wrap long lines instead of scrolling sideways.
Math preview	A typeset preview of the math under the cursor, in source mode.

Visual editor

Setting	What it does
Editor width	How wide text gets in the visual editor. Extra window space stays empty, so short lines are easier to read.
Image resize step	Dragging an image snaps its width to multiples of this fraction of the text width: 10%, 25%, or 50%.

Toolchain

Every external program Texpile runs, for LaTeX, Typst, and version control, and whether each one was found. Nothing is bundled; these are found on your PATH. Check again runs the check once more after you install something.

Integrations

Setting	What it does
Zotero citations	Adds Insert citation from Zotero to the right-click menu and the command palette in LaTeX and Typst documents. Needs Zotero running with the Better BibTeX plugin. Off hides the action.

Startup

Setting	What it does
Reopen last folder on launch	Opens the folder you had open when you last quit, on the file you left open.
Check for updates on launch	Looks for a new version when Texpile starts and shows a notice you can dismiss. Downloading the update is a manual step, from the download page.

AI assistant

Setting	What it does
MCP server	Runs a local MCP server so an assistant such as Claude Code can see your open tabs, current file, caret, and unsaved changes. It cannot edit your documents. See AI assistants (MCP).
Let the assistant change the compile command	Off by default. The compile command runs as a shell command, so an assistant that can rewrite it can run any program on your computer. It can still change where the PDF and build files go.
Show instructions	The setup command for Claude Code and the config entry for Codex, with the real port filled in.