Settings and appearance

What a user can change about the way the product looks and behaves for them: where the preferences live, how the interface is made to render light or dark, which theme and accent it wears, and which language, formats and time zone it speaks in. It is also where the boundary runs between a personal choice and an operator's decision, because a setting the deployment has fixed is simply not there.

The Settings app

Summary A full-screen settings surface with a page per area down the left and collapsible sections on the right: General, Notifications, Security and Privacy, Accounts, one page per app, and whatever plugin pages the deployment adds. Every section carries a title and an explanation of what it is for.

Why it matters Settings scattered through the app they belong to are settings nobody finds, and the support call that follows is longer than the change itself. Gathering them in one surface means a user can be told where to go in one sentence, and a help page can link straight to the individual control. The decision to hide a fixed setting rather than gray it out is the other half of this: a disabled control invites a user to try, fail, and open a ticket asking to have it enabled, whereas an absent one does not raise the question at all.

Description

• Pages for General, Notifications, Security and Privacy, Accounts, each app, and plugin pages such as Resources, Groups and Your Data
• Each page is a stack of collapsible sections with a title and an explanation; sections start collapsed on phones
• On phones it becomes a two-page flow with a list of areas and a detail page
• A setting the operator has fixed is hidden rather than shown disabled; whole pages and individual sections can be removed by configuration
• A search field above the pages finds an individual setting and jumps to it
• One General page holds the preferences that are not tied to a single app
• Opens from the top bar, the mobile menu, the account menu and a keyboard shortcut, and can be linked to down to a single control
• An operator can add pages that embed an external configuration site

Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Pages and sections are removed with io.ox/core//disabledSettingsPanes and io.ox/core//disabledSettingsSections; individual controls disappear when the underlying setting is made read-only. Embedded external pages are configured under io.ox/settings/configjump.

Quick Settings panel

Summary A gear in the top bar opens a side panel holding the settings that change what is on screen at that moment — the current app's layout, sort order and folder view, together with the appearance and theme controls.

Why it matters The settings people change most often are the ones they want to see the effect of immediately, and sending them to a full-screen settings app to change a list layout takes them out of the thing they were looking at. Keeping those few controls beside the view means the change can be judged against the actual content rather than remembered and checked afterwards. Which is also why the panel stays open for a view option and steps aside for anything that hands over to another surface.

Description

• The panel shows the current app's view options — layout, sort order, folder view — plus the appearance and theme controls
• Settings that change the view keep the panel open; commands that hand over to another surface close it
• Carries links to Connect your device and All settings
• Arrow keys move between options and between groups

Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier.

Appearance

Summary Whether the interface renders light or dark, chosen independently of the theme. The options are Light, Dark and Auto, where Auto follows whatever the operating system is set to. Every theme renders in both appearances, so changing this does not change which theme the user is on.

Why it matters Dark mode is a comfort and an accessibility choice, and before this it was a theme — so a user who wanted a dark interface had to give up the background and accent they had picked, and a deployment that wanted to keep people out of dark mode had to blocklist a theme. Separating the two makes each answer the question it is actually about. It also lets an operator lock the theme catalog down to its own brand and still let people go dark, which is the combination most organizations want.

Description

• Choose Light, Dark, or Auto, where Auto follows the operating system setting
• Every theme renders in both appearances; a theme may pin itself to one, and then ignores the setting
• On smartphones the same choice appears as the Theme settings select — Light theme, Dark theme, Use system setting
• Gated separately from the theme picker, so a deployment can lock its theme catalog and still allow dark mode

Availability Since 8.55. The choice is stored in io.ox/core//theming/appearance, and io.ox/core//theming/appearanceEnabled decides whether the controls are offered at all. Making io.ox/core//theming/appearance read-only also takes the controls away, and is the administrator's way of fixing one appearance for everybody.

Choose a theme

Summary The background style and the accent color the whole interface uses, picked from what the deployment offers: photo backgrounds, plain colors and named designs, grouped into sections, plus an accent color for buttons, links and selected items. The picker lives in Settings under General, and in the Quick Settings side panel.

Why it matters This is the one part of the product a user can make their own, and for many people a familiar background is how a work tool stops feeling like somebody else's software. For the deployment it is the opposite concern: the catalog is where the operator's branding lands, and locking it to the house style is a legitimate decision — which is why it is gated separately from the light and dark choice above, so restricting one does not take away the other.

Description

• Pick one of the styles the deployment offers — photo backgrounds, plain colors, named designs — grouped into sections
• Pick an accent color used for buttons, links and selected items; some themes bring their own accent and lock the choice
• Turn on Muted colors to show less color in the background and the accent alike
• Offered in Settings under General, and in the Quick Settings side panel

Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. Not on smartphones, where the three appearance options take its place. The current theme is io.ox/core//theming/current, the catalog io.ox/core//theming/themes, the accent list io.ox/core//theming/appColors, and the muted setting io.ox/core//theming/mutedColors. The picker is withdrawn by io.ox/core//theming/picker/enabled, or when only one theme is left to choose from. Branding a deployment is covered under Theming.

Language, regional formats and time zone

Summary The interface language, the time zone, and the way dates, times and numbers are written. The regional defaults that come with a language can be overridden one at a time — time format, date format, number format, first day of the week — with a live preview of the result.

Why it matters A time zone that is wrong by one is worse than no calendar at all, because every appointment in it is plausible and off by an hour; people who travel, and people whose company headquarters are somewhere else, hit this on their first day. The format overrides exist because language and convention do not line up as neatly as a locale list suggests: an English-speaking user in Germany wants the interface in English and the week starting on Monday, and before these were separable they had to choose which of the two to get wrong.

Description

• Pick the language from the locales the deployment ships
• Pick a time zone from a searchable picker with favorites
• Override the regional defaults — time format, date format, number format, first day of the week — with a live preview
• German can be switched to the informal form, Du instead of Sie
• Changing the language or the time zone shows a hint with a Reload page button

Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier, including the format customization. The informal German form arrived in 8.49, through the feature toggle informalLanguage, on by default. The values are io.ox/core//language, io.ox/core//timezone, io.ox/core//localeData for the format overrides, and io.ox/core//preferInformalLanguage.

Keyboard and screen reader support in the shell

Summary The shell that every app sits inside — the top bar, the folder tree, the side panels, the notification list, the floating windows — is operable without a mouse and describes itself to assistive technology. Focus is managed rather than left where the browser puts it, and animation is reduced where the operating system asks for it.

Why it matters Keyboard and screen reader support cannot be added to the apps alone, because every app is reached through the same shell: if the launcher cannot be operated by keyboard, then nothing behind it can be either. It is also a condition of purchase rather than a courtesy — public sector procurement asks for a conformance statement, and the European Accessibility Act has made that a legal requirement. Focus management is the part users notice: a dialog that drops focus back to the top of the page costs a screen reader user the whole journey back to where they were.

Description

• A Skip to main content link, a hidden heading naming the current app, and landmark roles on the top bar, folder tree and side panel
• Arrow-key navigation in the app launcher, the side panel rail, the notification list and the Quick Settings panel
• A screen-reader-only announcement channel used for alerts, refresh state and offline state
• Focus is trapped inside floating windows and restored when panels, dialogs and taskbar entries close
• Animations are reduced where the operating system asks for it

Availability Since 7.10.6 or earlier. The conformance status, the known gaps and the per-release history are published under Accessibility, together with the formal Accessibility Conformance Report.