Preferences

Open the Preferences dialog from Settings > Preferences.

The dialog is organised into sections; each section is described below.

General

• Zoom In Sensitivity — Controls how fast the timeline zooms in
• Zoom Out Sensitivity — Controls how fast the timeline zooms out
• Shift+Zoom Sensitivity — Controls zoom speed when holding Shift
• Default Length — Default timeline length for new projects (in bars)
• Default View — Default visible range when opening a project (in bars)
• Auto-Save — Enable or disable automatic saving, and set the interval

UI

• Panel visibility defaults — Choose which panels are shown on startup
• Behavior settings — Configure UI interaction preferences
• Auto-crossfade new audio clips - New audio clips overlap into a crossfade automatically when they meet a neighbour
• Duplicate Loop Range: grow / advance - When you duplicate the loop range, choose whether the loop grows to cover the copy or advances past it
• Auto-hide arrangement scrollbars — Keep the arrangement scrollbars hidden until you hover near them, for a cleaner workspace
• Language — Select the UI language from the dropdown. The list is populated from the locale files (.json) shipped in MAGDA's lang/ folder, so available languages grow as translations are contributed. A restart-required hint appears after switching; the new language takes effect the next time MAGDA launches. See Localization for how translations are managed and how to contribute.

Appearance

The Appearance tab groups everything that controls how MAGDA looks: the colour theme, interface scale, typeface, layout density, and the track/clip colour palettes. Every control here applies live the moment you click OK or Apply - no restart required.

Theme

Pick MAGDA's colour scheme from the Application Theme dropdown. Three themes ship built in:

Theme	Notes
Dark	The default.
Light	Light-background variant.
High Contrast	Black background with brighter colours throughout, for maximum legibility.

Two factory themes ship alongside them, listed below a separator: Concrete Warehouse, a muted industrial palette with amber accents, and Neon Cyberpunk, saturated pinks and cyans on deep violet. They behave exactly like custom themes, so they double as worked examples of the JSON format.

Any custom themes you have installed appear below a further separator, listed by name.

Custom themes

Three buttons under the dropdown let you build and manage your own themes:

• Download Theme Template - exports the current theme's palette as a complete, editable .json file to start from.
• Load Theme - pick an edited .json; MAGDA copies it into the Themes folder and selects it.
• Open Themes Folder - reveals the Themes folder in your file browser.

Themes are plain JSON files in Documents/MAGDA/Themes. Each file declares:

• name - the display name shown in the dropdown.
• base - either dark or light. Any colour role you do not override is inherited from that base, so you only need to list what you want to change.
• colours - a map of colour role to hex value. Roles include a six-step accent ramp (accent1 is the primary selection/active colour, through accent6) plus surface and text roles.
• syntaxColours - optional; themes the code/console text.

The filename (without .json) is the theme's id. Unknown keys and invalid colours are skipped, so a partial file is safe to load.

MAGDA watches the selected theme file while it is active: edit its JSON on disk and the change re-applies instantly, which makes hand-tuning a palette quick.

Generate a theme with AI

You can also describe a theme in plain language. In the AI Assistant console, type /theme <description> - for example warm sunset, dark or cyberpunk neon on black. MAGDA writes the generated theme to Documents/MAGDA/Themes, selects it, and applies it live. Edit the resulting file to fine-tune it.

UI Scale

Pick a global scale factor for the whole interface. Useful on HiDPI / 4K screens where MAGDA looks too small at native resolution, or on the opposite end where you want more screen real estate.

Setting	Behavior
Auto (from display DPI)	Scale is derived from the display's reported DPI.
100% – 200%	Fixed multiplier, ignoring DPI auto-detection. Common picks: 125% on a regular 4K monitor, 150% on a Retina laptop with external scaling, 200% if you want to see fewer rows from across the room.

Changes apply live - no restart required. The shortcuts Cmd++ and Cmd+- also bump the scale up and down by one preset.

UI Font

Choose the interface typeface from the UI Font dropdown. The first entry, Inter (default), is MAGDA's bundled font; below it every typeface installed on your system is listed alphabetically, so the available fonts depend on your machine. UI Font changes the typeface only - use Font Size to change how large it renders.

Font Size

Use Font Size to scale MAGDA-owned UI text without changing component geometry. Use Localized Font Size as an extra multiplier on top of the global font setting for localized glyphs, so 150% global and 120% localized renders those glyphs at 180%. Chinese defaults to 115% and Japanese defaults to 110% until the user saves their own localized font size.

Density

The Spacing slider tightens or loosens the padding between interface elements, applied on top of the UI Scale. It ranges from 60% to 140% in 5% steps, with 100% the default. Lower values pack more onto the screen; higher values give the layout more breathing room.

Track & Clip Colours

• Track Colour Palette - Define the swatch set offered when you colour tracks and clips
• Track colours - Right-click any track header to assign a colour; the colour tints headers in the arrangement, session view, and mixer strips
• Clip Colours - Clips can have their own colour or follow the track colour

Storage

MAGDA keeps user data in three configurable folders. Each can be redirected to any path on disk — point them at an external drive, a synced folder, or a per-project staging area.

Folder	Holds	Default location
Data	App config, controller profiles, Lua scripts, locale overrides	~/Library/MAGDA (macOS), %APPDATA%\MAGDA (Windows), ~/.config/MAGDA (Linux)
Presets	.mps device presets and the per-plugin preset cache	<Data>/presets
Render	Bounce / freeze / export output	<Data>/render

Click Browse… next to a path to relocate that folder. MAGDA does not move existing content for you — copy or symlink the contents over before switching if you want to keep what's there.

External Audio Editor

Set the application MAGDA hands audio clips to when you choose Edit in External Editor (see Waveform Editor). Use Browse… to pick the application, or Reset to clear it. While no editor is set, the clip menu item stays disabled.

Media Database

The location and maintenance of the sample-indexing database live here too. See Media Library — Managing the database.

Rendering

• Sample rate — Default sample rate for rendered files
• Export bit depth — Default bit depth for audio exports
• Bounce bit depth — Default bit depth for bounced and frozen audio
• Audio export format is chosen in the export dialog: WAV 16-bit, WAV 24-bit, WAV 32-bit float, or FLAC

AI

AI provider configuration has moved to a dedicated dialog. Open it from Settings > AI Settings.

See AI Settings for the full reference.

Shortcuts

Two tabs:

• Keyboard — view and remap every keyboard shortcut, with a reset-to-defaults option
• Gestures — remap the mouse and trackpad wheel gestures (scroll, zoom, track height) per context

Both are saved between sessions. See Keyboard Shortcuts for the full default list of keys and gestures.