How do I change the theme and layout?

Open the gear (⚙) at the top-right of the coding workspace and pick from the dropdown, or open the full settings page and click Appearance. From there you can change the Theme, the Sidebar size, which Active quadrants show, the Git sidebar side, the Preview placement, and apply one-click Layouts. Changes apply straight away.

Theme

The Theme row has three choices: dark, dracula, and light. New installs start on dracula. Click one to switch the whole app instantly. There is no separate "system" or "auto" theme; you pick one of the three.

Sidebar size

Sidebar size sets how wide the sidebars are, with four choices: none, narrow, medium, and wide. Pick none to hide them and give your terminals the full width. New installs start on medium.

Active quadrants

A quadrant is one of the terminal panels in the coding grid. Active quadrants shows a button for each quadrant in the tab you are on (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4). A highlighted button means that quadrant is showing; click it to turn that quadrant off, and click again to bring it back.

If you turn them all off, the grid reads:

No quadrants enabled — open ⚙ to turn some on.

For more on quadrants, see What is a quadrant?.

Git sidebar

Git sidebar has two choices, left and right. This puts the git sidebar (changes, files, history, pull requests) on that side of the workspace. New installs put it on the left.

Preview placement

Preview placement controls how the app preview appears next to your terminals. Two choices:

• manual: each terminal gets its own preview in its row partner, so you can have up to two previews at once.
• follow: a single preview that retargets to whichever terminal you last clicked. New installs use follow.

When follow is selected, a smaller sub-choice appears underneath:

• Browser fixed on top: the browser always stays in the top row, and only the column flips when you change focus. This keeps a stable visual frame. This is the default.
• Browser follows active quadrant: the browser sits in the focused terminal's row partner, so it moves around more but stays closer to what you are working on.

See How do I open the preview to see my app?.

Layouts

Layouts are one-click presets that set several of the above at once (which quadrants show, sidebar size, preview placement, and which previews are open). There are three:

• Preview pair: "Q1 + Q3 terminals, Q2 + Q4 previews, sidebars on"
• Quad terminals: "All four quadrants, sidebars on, no previews"
• Solo: "Q1 terminal · Q2 preview · Q4 DevTools"

Click one and the layout changes in a single step. You can then fine-tune any individual control afterwards.

Default startup view (full page only)

The full Appearance section has one control the dropdown does not: Default startup view. This picks which top-level view codus opens on launch. The useful choices are coding, planner, and plans; Default opens the coding workspace.

How do I know it worked?

The change happens as you click, with no Save button and no restart. The theme swaps colours instantly; layout choices redraw the grid right away.

Common problems

• My theme did not stick after restart. It is saved automatically. If it reverts, you may have two codus windows open that disagree; close the extra window and set it once more.
• The "email" startup option does nothing useful. In the current release the email view is turned off, so choosing email as your startup view opens the coding workspace instead. Pick coding, planner, or plans.