Desktop App Options

Overview

The Copia Desktop application has a number of additional settings that can be adjusted by users. The page will describe each of them, as well as provide recommendations for which settings to enable if applicable.

You can find your Desktop App Options by clicking File > Options. This should open a window like the one seen below. The Options are grouped by category on the left side.

Accounts

There are two types of Copia accounts. The most common type is a standard Copia account that uses Copia to host your repositories. If your account falls into this category, you should use the Sign In button beneath app.copia.io. If you are a customer using Copia in a Self-Hosted environment, you should use the Sign In button beneath Copia Enterprise.

Integrations

The Copia Desktop app can sometimes need to interact with external 3rd-party applications, such as resolving merge conflicts in text files or executing Git commands in a command line interface.

External Editor

This options sets the default application to use when opening text files from the Copia Desktop App. We recommend that you set it to your preferred text editor, whether that be Notepad++, Visual Studio Code, or even just the standard Notepad application that ships with Windows.

Shell

This option sets the default shell application that Copia will open when required, such as when you need to run Git commands. You can use your preferred application for this option, but for the majority of Copia users we recommend that you set it to use Command Prompt.

Git

This section of Options is related to how Copia manages Git on your local computer.

Name

This section is for entering the username and password that you want associated with your Git history. While this doesn't technically need to match your Copia username and email, we strongly recommend that you match them.

Default branch for new repositories

Copia will use the value of this option when creating a new local repository. When creating new repositories from scratch in the Copia Web App, new repos will always be created with the default branch main.

Changing any of these settings will modify your global Git config file, which may impact new repos that are created with a different Git client.

Appearance

The section allows you to modify the appearance of your Copia Desktop App. It allows you change the brightness, contrast, and preferring bold-text.

Prompts

The Copia Desktop App gives prompts when users perform actions that may be irreversible or otherwise potentially dangerous. For new users to Copia and Git, we recommend that you enable all of these options as they can help prevent you from making mistakes.

Advanced

This section includes options for advanced users and for those options that don't fall into the other categories.

If I have changes and I switch branches...

This setting dictates the behavior Copia should have when switching branches when you have uncommitted changes. The safest option for avoiding losing your work is "Ask me where I want the changes to go".

Background Updates

Enabling this feature periodically (every 15 minutes) performs a Fetch operation on all on your repositories. This can be useful in case you forget to Fetch before working in a repository. We recommend that you have this option enabled, but you should still get in the habit of fetching prior to working on your repository.

Enable Auto-Archive

This enables the Auto-Archive feature and is discussed in detail in this section.