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Preferences

Documentation > User Manuals > v1.2.0 User Manual

The Preferences Window gives you options to configure MyPaint’s appearance, input, keyboard shortcuts and many other settings. Open the Preferences Window by

  • Menu Edit -> Edit Preferences
  • Menu Window -> Edit Preferences

The Window has seven sections that can be accessed by the tabs at the top

Pressure

Pressure

See [[v1.2 Global Pressure Mapping Pressure workaround]]

Devices

Devices

Here you can see and restrict pointing devices to specific tasks on the canvas, or have them ignored completely if they glitch your drawing. Click on the text in the “Use for…” column to open a popup list. You can also limit an input device to non-painting tasks like moving or menu controls. This is especially helpful when you have a pen&touch-screen and you want to make sure the is no drawing with touch. The last column sets the behavior for a scrolling wheel, either zoom or move the canvas.

Buttons

Buttons

Set up button combinations with your pointer input device. In example, this can be configured to use your cursor as brush, colour picker and to navigate, depending on the control keys you press. Click the + button to add a new action, click the - button to remove the selected action. There are even actions that will open a brush or colour picker at your cursor location. Click on the text fields to edit an action or the modifier keys. Available modifier keys are:

  • Ctrl
  • Shift
  • Alt

Plus one button of your pointing device - e.g. graphics pen tip, eraser and side buttons.

Keys

Keys

Here you can define keyboard shortcuts that don’t involve the pointing device. You can use every key of your keyboard, except for the following keys) or combinations of keys:

  • Esc, Enter, Backspace, Tab, Print Screen and the arrow keys

In the left you see all available actions, on the right are assigned shortcut keys. Click on a cell in the right column to edit the keys. A warning will be displayed if you choose a key (combination) that is already used by another action.

All menu items can be used with a shortcut.

Load & Save

Load and Save

[importexport text here]

View

View

[Interface and Canvas text]

Colour

Colour

[Colour prefs text]

Pressure workaround

How to use devices that send pressure too early

Backup Files and Autosaves

Overwrite Backup Copies MyPaint makes a backup copy with a tilde ~ after its name when you overwrite a file. This is a feature intended to keep your data safe in the event of a power outage when you are overwriting a large file. There are no plans to add a user-facing toggle to turn this feature off for v1.2.0, however one may be added early on in the v1.

Starting with v1.2.0, some of the configuration files changed location to conform to the xdg standard. The instructions on this page describe how to migrate settings from v1.1 or older. Setting up Open a terminal and start a bash shell (by entering the command bash) if you’re not sure that the default shell is bash. Then enter the following: DATADIR=${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/mypaint CONFDIR=${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/mypaint OLDDIR=$HOME/.mypaint All items can be migrated independently, although if your old settings.