General

Six tabs: System, Quick Search Window, Full Search Window, Preview, Quick Navigation, and Preview & Thumbnails.

System

• Start SwiftList with Windows — checkbox, launches SwiftList at sign-in.
• Auto check for updates on startup — checkbox.
• Auto silent update when a new version is detected — checkbox, only enabled while the check above is on; downloads and installs updates in the background without prompting.
• Enable hardware acceleration — checkbox, on by default. Turning it off forces the quick search window to render in software instead of using Direct3D — this works around NVIDIA Advanced Optimus refusing to hot-switch GPUs while SwiftList is running (only the quick window is affected, not the whole app). Requires restarting SwiftList to take effect.
• Hide tray icon — checkbox, off by default. Applies immediately, no restart needed. The same menu the tray icon's right-click shows is always available from the Quick window's own logo regardless of this setting, so hiding the tray icon never strands you without a way back into Settings or Exit.
• Enable fuzzy matching — checkbox, on by default. With fuzzy matching on, a bare search term matches as long as its characters occur in order anywhere in the name; turning this off requires a bare term to appear as a contiguous substring instead (abc no longer matches a-b-c) — see Search Syntax for what does and doesn't change. Applies immediately, no restart needed.
• Log level — dropdown: Error / Warn / Info (default) / Debug. Controls verbosity across the App, Service, and Hook logs (see Service Status).
• Interface language — dropdown, populated from every installed translation provider (built-in languages plus any a plugin adds).

Theme selection moved to its own Appearance section — see that page for the theme picker and the "follow system light/dark setting" option.

Quick Search Window

Covers both the quick search bar's appearance and how its search results are prioritized.

Search Bar Layout — customizes the size and on-screen position of the quick search bar:

• Search Bar Width (px) — range 300–1200px, default 570px.
• Search Bar Height (px) — range 45–120px, default 60px. This one number also drives the result row's icon size, name/path font size, and row height (height / 60), so a taller search bar scales the whole result list up with it, always keeping the same proportions between icon and text.
• Show clock in search box — checkbox, off by default. While the search box is empty, replaces the usual "Type to search..." placeholder text with the current date, day of week, and time instead. Disappears the moment you start typing, same as the placeholder it replaces. Quick window only — the inline window always keeps its normal placeholder, even with this on.
• Reopen as full window on repeat hotkey — checkbox, off by default. Normally, pressing the toggle hotkey again while the quick window is already open just hides it; turning this on makes the second press switch to the full window instead (carrying over whatever query you'd already typed), rather than closing anything.
• Lock position — checkbox, off by default. Stops the quick window being dragged, so a stray press can't nudge it off the spot you put it on. Right-clicking the logo still resets its position, and Reset Layout Settings below clears the lock along with everything else.
• Reset Layout Settings button — restores all five settings above to their defaults.

Right-clicking the quick window's logo resets just its on-screen position (not size), re-centering it the same way it centers on first launch.

Result Type Priority — the same up/down-arrow (or drag-to-reorder) list used for Quick Navigation below: move a result type (Applications, Settings, File Filters, any third-party plugin's own searchable items, or the built-in "Files" entry) up or down to make it always outrank the types below it in the quick window's results, regardless of which one actually matched the query text better. History and Favorites always come first and aren't part of this list.

Each type can also have its own single-character trigger (optional, one text box per row): typing that character as the very first thing in the quick window shows only that type's results, hiding everything else — see Search Syntax for examples. Typing just the trigger with nothing after it yet shows a "keep typing to search X only" prompt instead of "No Search Results". Pick a character you'd never normally start a real search with, since it's reserved once a type is assigned it — a punctuation character (e.g. ;) works more reliably than a plain space, since a lone space with nothing typed after it is treated the same as an empty search box and won't show that prompt.

Full Search Window

Sets the default size of the full/main search window (the larger window you get from the taskbar or Start Menu shortcut, as opposed to the quick popup — see Getting Started):

• Window Width (px) — range 640–2000px, default 854px.
• Window Height (px) — range 400–1400px, default 480px. The minimums match the window's own resize floor, so a configured value is never silently overridden by the window itself.
• Reset Search Window Settings button.

Dragging the window's edge to resize it manually is remembered automatically — the next time you open the window (or open a new one), it comes back at whatever size you last left it at, and this page's fields update to match. Resizing while maximized doesn't overwrite the remembered size; only resizing in the normal (non-maximized) state does.

Results Grid Column Order — the same reorder list used elsewhere in Settings (see Favorites): move a results-grid column (Name, Path, Date Modified, or any plugin-provided column) left or right. Only affects the grid/table results layout — there are no columns to reorder in the compact list layout.

Sidebar Filter Order — same mechanic, for the order the sidebar's filter groups (Type, Date Modified, and any plugin-added groups) appear in.

Actions Menu Section Order — same mechanic, for the order the sections of the actions menu appear in: the built-in actions group, plus one section per plugin that contributes actions there (e.g. Custom Actions, or the Windows shell right-click menu). A section not yet in this list falls back to its natural position (built-in first, then plugin sections in whatever order they were contributed).

Clicking a results-grid column header cycles through three states: ascending, descending, then a third click resets it back to the default relevance-ranked order (the header's sort arrow disappears). This is remembered only for as long as SwiftList keeps running — quitting the app (not just closing the window) resets sorting back to the default the next time you open it, unlike the column/sidebar order above which is saved permanently.

Preview

• Preview Width (px) — range 250–900px.
• Preview Height (px) — range 250–1200px, default sized so the pane isn't overly tall on a typical display.
• Reset Preview Window Settings button.

The preview window ignores the current result count — it's a fixed size, not a size that grows with content. See Actions Menu & Preview for how the pane is positioned.

Quick Navigation

Sets the order the Quick Navigation menu's root-level sections appear in — one section per contributing provider (e.g. Favorites/History/configured folders, Total Commander's Directory Hotlist, Directory Opus's Favorites, a plugin's own quick-nav entries), each labeled with its own header.

Provider Order — the same up/down-arrow (or drag-to-reorder) list used elsewhere in Settings (see Favorites): move a provider up or down to change where its section lands relative to the others. Only providers whose plugin component is currently enabled are listed here — one disabled under Plugins never becomes a menu candidate in the first place, so there's nothing to order for it.

Preview & Thumbnails

Two independent priority-order lists, each deciding which provider gets first refusal for its own job — normally decided purely by each provider's own fixed, built-in priority, with no way to change that short of disabling a provider entirely.

File Preview Provider Order — for file preview providers (for example, the QuickLook Bridge plugin sets its own priority above every built-in previewer). The same up/down-arrow (or drag-to-reorder) list used elsewhere in Settings (see Favorites): move a provider up to make it always win over the ones below it, regardless of its own built-in priority. Only providers whose plugin component is currently enabled are listed here — one disabled under Plugins would never actually preview anything anyway.

Thumbnail Provider Order — same mechanic, for the icons/thumbnails shown next to results in the search list itself (as opposed to the preview pane) — most relevant once more than one plugin implements a custom thumbnail provider, since only one built-in provider exists today.