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Settings

All preferences are in the View menu and are saved in one file, settings.json, in your user configuration folder: %APPDATA%\chromascope on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/chromascope on macOS and ~/.config/chromascope on Linux. Set the environment variable CHROMASCOPE_CONFIG_DIR to a folder of your own if you want a portable installation to keep its files elsewhere. If the file is missing or damaged the defaults are used, and one unreadable value never resets the others.

Appearance

  • Theme: System, Light or Dark.
  • Interface size: 90, 100, 115 or 130 percent.
  • m/z decimals: how many decimals an m/z shows on screen, from 2 to 6. Exports always keep the full precision.

The View menu also shows or hides Data files, Trace settings and Mass spectrum in the Data explorer.

Update check

Chromascope looks for a newer version once a day. When there is one, the status bar says "Chromascope X.Y.Z is available" with two links: Download opens the release page in your browser, Dismiss hides the notice for that version. Nothing is downloaded or installed by the program.

What is sent: one ordinary web request to github.com, made in the background after the window has opened. It carries no name, no file name and no data from your work, only what every web request contains: your IP address and the text Chromascope/<version>. It does not use the GitHub programming interface. When you are offline or behind a firewall, nothing is shown and nothing is repeated before the next day.

To switch it off, clear Check for updates in the View menu, or set the environment variable CHROMASCOPE_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1, for example on a laboratory computer. The command-line tool and the headless MCP server never contact the network.

Other places with settings

  • The path of msconvert is set under File, Vendor import settings.
  • What an AI assistant may do is decided when you start chromascope-mcp, see Setup.