Settings

Composer's behaviour is driven by a single configuration file, settings.xml, that lives next to the executable. The file is loaded at startup and persisted automatically when you change values through the Settings window in Composer Desktop. For automation, every setting flagged API exposed in the settings.xml reference can also be read or written at runtime via the HTTP API.

This manual covers the same option surface from two angles:

• The Settings window — one page per tab in this manual, with screenshots and tab-by-tab guidance for tuning Composer through the Desktop UI. Start here if you're configuring a workstation or production host interactively.
• settings.xml reference — the auto-generated table of every property on the Settings class with its XML element name, type, and a flag for runtime-mutability. Use this when authoring settings.xml by hand, scripting deployments, or driving Composer from the API.

A layered settings.local.xml next to the canonical file overrides individual values without modifying the committed default — useful for environment-specific tweaks (a dev workstation that wants different log paths than the production host running the same settings.xml).

Settings window tour

The Settings window is opened from the application menu (Edit → Settings). It groups related options across 14 tabs along the top edge. Each tab is documented on its own page; click through for screenshots and per-option guidance:

• General — application-wide defaults: window behaviour, language, project autosave directory, default project frame rate.
• Autosave — how often Composer writes timestamped .prj snapshots of the open project, how many are retained, and how to restore one.
• Audio — host audio device selection, sample rate, parallel audio processing, VU-meter behaviour.
• Vindral Live — Vindral Live integration settings (cloud-side platform).
• OpsGenie — API key and routing for the OpsGenie alerting integration. See Operations & Tuning → OpsGenie for the integration overview.
• Web API — HTTP API host, port, TLS, API-key file, CORS, behaviour when project is stopped. See the HTTP API manual for the endpoint surface.
• Assets finder — how Composer locates referenced media when a project is moved between hosts (search roots, fallback rules).
• Alarms — alarm thresholds and persistence options used by the runtime alarm system.
• Metrics — Prometheus metrics endpoint, base metrics throttling, extended metrics and log shipping (Composer Monitor).
• Live Preview — quality / cadence of Composer's live preview rendering for the desktop UI.
• Debug — diagnostic toggles useful during reproduction work; off in production.
• GPU and Rendering Options — clock-locking, performance-clock policy, hardware-scheduling toggles, render thread tuning.
• Script Engine — script-engine on/off, auto-reload of modified scripts, debug window enablement.
• Project Management — project versioning, auto-reload-new-version-via-API behaviour.

The settings tour ends there, but Composer also maintains several automatic backup files alongside its working state — for settings.xml, apikeys.json, and the open project — that are mostly invisible until you need them:

• Backup files — what Composer auto-creates, where each lives, what triggers it, and when reaching for one helps recover from a corrupt file or an unintended change.

For settings that don't appear in any tab — internal toggles, advanced power-user knobs — the settings.xml reference is exhaustive.