Settings & Keybindings

Open Settings by clicking the gear icon (⚙) in the titlebar. An orange badge appears on the icon when a Kova update is available.

Categories are listed in a rail down the left side; the window stays a constant size as you switch between them. Use the search box at the top to jump straight to a setting by name instead of browsing categories.

Appearance

Setting	Options	Default
UI theme	Dark · Light	Dark
Interface scale	70% · 80% · 90% · 100% · 110% · 120% · 130% · 140% · 150%	100%
Content width	Fixed · Full	Fixed

Toggles between Dark and Light mode for the interface, editor, and panels. Changes take effect immediately — no restart required.

Interface scale zooms the entire app chrome — titlebars, panels, menus, editor. Useful if the default size feels too large or too small on your display. Presentation slides are always rendered at pixel-exact resolution regardless of the scale setting.

Content width controls the editor's line width. Fixed keeps editor lines at a comfortable reading width, centred in the panel. Full stretches the editor to fill the panel as you resize the editor/preview split.

Editor

Setting	Options	Default
Show frontmatter	On · Off	Off
Word wrap	On · Off	On

When Show frontmatter is on, the YAML frontmatter block is visible in the editor. By default it is hidden — Kova manages it automatically via the Inspector. Turn it on if you want to edit frontmatter directly.

When Word wrap is off, long lines extend past the panel edge and a horizontal scrollbar appears instead of wrapping. Useful when working with wide tables or code snippets.

Editor zoom — hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel to increase or decrease the editor font size. Keyboard shortcuts also work: Ctrl++ to zoom in, Ctrl+- to zoom out, Ctrl+0 to reset to default. The zoom level is not persisted across sessions.

Language & Spelling

Setting	Options	Default
Check spelling while typing	On · Off	Off
Dictionary language	22 languages	Auto-detected from system locale

When Check spelling while typing is enabled, Kova underlines misspelled words in red as you type. The dictionary is loaded on first use.

When enabled, a Dictionary language selector appears. Kova supports 22 languages including English (US/UK/AU), French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and more.

Kova also tracks Learned words — words you've right-clicked and added to your personal dictionary. These are listed in Settings and can be removed individually.

Workspace

Setting	Options	Default
Autosave	Off · 15 sec · 30 sec · 1 min · 5 min	30 sec
Confirm before closing	On · Off	On
On startup	Blank document · Reopen last file	Blank document
PDF page size	A4 · Letter · Match slide size	A4

When Autosave is enabled, Kova saves the file automatically after the first manual save, at the chosen interval. Autosave does not trigger on an unsaved new document.

PDF page size — paper size used for PDF export. Pages are always laid out landscape. Match slide size makes each page exactly the slide's own dimensions instead of a fixed paper size — see Exporting — PDF export.

Confirm before closing — when enabled, Kova shows a confirmation dialog if you try to close or quit with unsaved changes. This applies to the window × button, Alt+F4, taskbar close, and Cmd+Q.

On startup — controls what Kova opens when it launches. Window size and position are always restored regardless of this setting.

Blank document — opens a new empty file on every launch.
Reopen last file — reopens the file you had open when you last quit, and restores the active slide position.

Presentation

Controls for the ▶ Present feature. See Presenting for a full explanation of each mode.

Setting	Options	Default
Display mode	Auto · Single · Dual · Mirror	Auto
Windowed presenter view	On · Off	Off
Always on top	On · Off	Off
Show next slide	On · Off	On
Show timer	On · Off	On
Notes font size	Small · Medium · Large	Medium

Windowed presenter view keeps the dual-screen presenter overlay in a normal, resizable window on your own display instead of fullscreen — see Presenting — Windowed presenter view. Always on top appears once windowed view is on, and keeps that window above other apps.

Themes

Setting	Options	Default
Default theme	Any installed theme	`light`

Sets the theme applied when you create a new document with Ctrl+N. Existing files keep whatever theme was last applied to them.

Shows the path to the custom themes folder with an Open folder button — the platform config directory, plus kova/themes/:

Platform	Path
Linux	`~/.config/kova/themes/`
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/kova/themes/`
Windows	`%APPDATA%\kova\themes\`

If Kova finds any .yaml files with syntax errors in that folder, the filenames and error details are listed here.

See Themes — Custom themes for the theme file format.

Updates

Setting	Options	Default
Check for updates on startup	On · Off	Off

When enabled, Kova checks the GitHub Releases page for new versions and shows an orange badge on the gear icon when one is available. No data is sent to Kova's servers — only a public GitHub API call is made.

Use the Check now button for an on-demand check without enabling automatic checks.

About

Links to the GitHub repository, issue reporting, this wiki, Open Collective support, and the community Matrix chat. A Licenses drill-down lists the open-source packages Kova is built on.

Keybindings

Five file-level shortcuts can be remapped by editing a YAML file.

File location

The platform config directory, plus kova/keybindings.yaml:

Platform	Path
Linux	`~/.config/kova/keybindings.yaml`
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/kova/keybindings.yaml`
Windows	`%APPDATA%\kova\keybindings.yaml`

The file is created from Kova's defaults on first read if it doesn't already exist.

Format

new_file:   ctrl+n
open_file:  ctrl+o
save:       ctrl+s
save_as:    ctrl+shift+s
focus_mode: ctrl+shift+f

Modifiers and keys

Modifiers: ctrl · shift · alt

Keys: single characters (n, s, f, …) or named keys:

Named key	Description
`escape`	Escape
`tab`	Tab
`space`	Space bar
`enter`	Enter / Return
`backspace`	Backspace
`delete`	Delete
`f1` – `f12`	Function keys
`up`, `down`, `left`, `right`	Arrow keys
`page_up`, `page_down`	Page Up / Page Down
`home`, `end`	Home / End

Combine modifiers and keys with +: ctrl+shift+s, alt+f4, ctrl+f1.

Example remapping

# Change Save As to Ctrl+Alt+S
save_as: ctrl+alt+s

# Remap focus mode to F11
focus_mode: f11

Omitted keys retain their defaults. Edit the file and restart Kova for changes to take effect.

Limitations

Editor shortcuts (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, heading toggles) and presentation navigation keys are not currently remappable via the keybindings file. See Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list.