Settings

The Settings screen gathers the application's global preferences. You reach it via the gear icon at the bottom of the sidebar. The options are organized into four sections: General, Files, Maintenance and About. Changes are saved immediately in the user preferences (no confirmation button is needed).

General

Dark Mode

Switches between the light and dark appearance of the application. The change is applied instantly to every open window. Dark mode is enabled by default.

Natural scrolling direction

Reverses the scrolling direction applied to the PDF view's pan buttons (vertical panning). When the option is off, clicking the down arrow moves the content upwards (the classic direction). When it is on, the content follows the direction of the click, in the manner of a macOS trackpad.

Default display mode

Sets the layout used to display pages in the reader. Four choices are available:

Single page: one page on screen, without continuous scrolling;
Continuous scroll (default option): pages follow one another vertically and scroll with the mouse or wheel;
Two pages: side-by-side display without continuous scrolling;
Two pages (Continuous): side-by-side display with vertical scrolling.

The chosen mode applies to every new document opening. It can be adjusted on an ad-hoc basis from the reader's control bar without changing this setting.

Files

Default folder

Sets the folder proposed by default in every save panel of the application (saving the edited PDF, split exports, conversion to Word, conversion to image, text extraction, table extraction, and so on).

Two buttons accompany the path display:

the folder icon opens the current location in the Finder;
the pencil icon opens a macOS folder picker to choose a new directory.

If you have never changed this option, the user's Documents folder is used.

Maintenance

View application logs

Displays HtkPDF's internal logs in a dedicated window. These logs can be useful for diagnosing a problem or for sending to technical support.

Clear cache

Deletes the temporary files generated by HtkPDF (thumbnails, intermediate processing results). This operation has no effect on your source PDFs or on your saved documents. A confirmation window is shown once the operation completes.

Restore default settings

Restores the four preferences to their original values:

Dark Mode enabled;
Natural scrolling direction disabled;
Display mode set to "Continuous scroll";
Default folder reset to the Documents folder.

A confirmation is requested before it is applied, because this action cannot be undone.

HtkPDF does not check for updates: they come through the app's distribution channel. Nor does it send notifications, or ever save a document on your behalf — saving always goes through the Dashboard's Save button (⌘S).

About

This section, at the bottom of the screen, shows the exact version number of the application, the internal build number, and the current copyright notice. This information should be provided with any request to technical support.

Note: all preferences are stored in the macOS user settings (UserDefaults) and are kept between application restarts.

Screenshots

1 screenshot — click to enlarge