What you'll learn: How to configure DRAW to your taste — the eight-tab settings dialog, theming, panel docking, and the various ways DRAW.cfg works under the hood.

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🎯 Goal: Configure DRAW to your preferences.

Open the settings dialog with Ctrl+, (comma) or Edit → Settings. The dialog has eight tabs covering every persistent option.

Tab	What it controls
General	Display scale, fullscreen toggle, FPS limit, UI scaling, tooltips and the Help Card (on/off, which edge of the canvas area it docks to, hover delay). Tooltip Delay and Help Card Delay work the same way: 0–5000 ms (0 = instant). The −/+ buttons and the mouse wheel step by 50 ms, and you can click the number to type an exact value, Enable AI Features.
Grid	Default grid size, geometry, alignment, snap state, crosshair appearance.
Palette	Default palette, recent-palettes list size, Lospec UI visibility.
Panels	Default visibility for Toolbox, Layers, Edit Bar, Advanced Bar, Preview, Character Map, Drawer, Color Mixer.
Audio	SFX and music enable/disable, master volume, mute.
Fonts	Default font and size, paths to scan for TTF/OTF.
Appearance	Various color scheme configurations.
Directories	Where DRAW looks for templates, palettes, music.

AI image generation is off by default, and while it is off DRAW surfaces nothing about it — no AI menu, no commands, no layer markers, no status text. Some people want nothing to do with generative tooling, and a disabled-but- visible feature is still in the way.

Tick Enable AI Features in the General tab to turn it on. That checkbox is the only place AI is mentioned while disabled. See Ch. 21 — AI Image Generation.

Drop your own fonts into DRAW's user data directory and they show up in the font pickers — no reinstall, no config editing. The base folder is <data>/FONTS/ (Linux ~/.local/share/DRAW/FONTS/, with the platform data-dir equivalent on macOS/Windows). Where each type goes:

Font type	Extensions	Where to put it
TTF / OTF	.ttf .otf	FONTS/ root or any subfolder
Bitmap	.fxx/F16/F14/F08, .psf, .bdf, .pcf, .fon	a subfolder of FONTS/
Color bitmap (CBF)	DPaint-style .bmp spritesheets	a subfolder of FONTS/
TheDraw	.TDF	FONTS/THEDRAW/ — plain .TDF files, no .TDX index needed

A subfolder's name becomes its group label in the font dropdown. Each source has a checkbox in the Fonts settings tab — User TTF/OTF Fonts, User Bitmap Fonts, User TDF Fonts — mirrored by FONTS_INCLUDE_USER, FONTS_INCLUDE_USER_BITMAP, and FONTS_INCLUDE_USER_TDF in DRAW.cfg. Toggles take effect on the next launch.

DRAW.cfg is a plain-text key/value file that lives next to the executable. You can hand-edit it any time. There are also OS-specific variants — DRAW.linux.cfg, DRAW.macOS.cfg, DRAW.windows.cfg — that override the base file when present.

CLI flags:

• --config /path/to/your.cfg — use a non-default config file.
• --config-upgrade — reconcile your existing config with any new defaults introduced by an upgrade. Recommended after each release.
• --option KEY=VALUE — override any config key from the command line (repeatable; beats the .cfg). E.g. --option FONTS_INCLUDE_USER_TDF=TRUE.
• --options-list — print every config key with its default and description, then exit.
• --cfg — print the path of the config file DRAW is actually using (after --config, OS-specific files and --portable are taken into account), then exit. Handy as vim $(DRAW --cfg).
• --dirs — list every DRAW folder: config, data, cache, crash logs, templates, brush/pattern/gradient sets, palettes, fonts, and the current theme's images, sounds, music, cursors and fonts.
• --dir-NAME — print one of those folders as a bare path, e.g. cd $(DRAW --dir-theme-sounds) or ls $(DRAW --dir-crash-logs). Names: cfg data cache crash-logs templates brushes patterns gradients palettes fonts theme theme-images theme-sounds theme-music theme-cursors theme-fonts.

DRAW --help is colored in a terminal (plain when piped, with --no-color, or when NO_COLOR is set). If ASSETS/DRAW.ans exists, the ANSI-art logo in it is printed above the help.

🎯 Goal: Customize DRAW's look and feel.

A theme is a folder under ASSETS/THEMES/ that contains:

• A THEME.CFG file with all UI colors.
• A directory of icon PNGs (replaceable per theme — see ASSETS/THEMES/DEFAULT/IMAGES/).
• A SOUNDS/ folder of WAV/OGG files (per-theme SFX).
• A MUSIC/ folder of tracker tunes that play on startup or via the Audio menu.
• A FONTS/ folder of bitmap and vector fonts.
• A splash.png for the launch animation.

Anything you can theme — UI palette, transform-overlay frame, smart-guide colors, layer panel highlights — lives in THEME.CFG. No recompile is required; DRAW reloads themes at runtime.

• Display Scale — 1× through 8×. Suits HiDPI monitors.
• Toolbar Scale — 1× through 4×. Independent of display scale, so you can have small toolbar icons on a HiDPI display.

🎯 Goal: Arrange panels for your workflow.

Panel	Toggle
Toolbox	Tab
Layer Panel	Ctrl+L
Edit Bar	F5
Advanced Bar	Shift+F5
Character Map	Ctrl+M
Preview Window	F4
Drawer	(Organizer / View menu)
Color Mixer	View → Color Mixer

Each can be docked left or right by Ctrl+Shift+clicking on the panel itself.

Beyond left and right, panels can be stacked in one column, tabbed, collapsed to their title, floated in their own window and docked back. Drag a panel by its handle (its title strip, the layers header, or the thin grip that appears on a panel's top edge), and right-click a handle for Move to Left/Right Edge, Collapse, Float and Reset Arrangement. The floating windows (Preview, Color Mixer, the color pickers, Pen Pressure, Browser) dock by dragging their title bar onto a dock target. See Chapter 22 — Moving, stacking, tabbing and floating panels.

• F11 — toggle all UI (canvas-only mode).
• Ctrl+F11 — keep only the menu bar.
• F10 — toggle the status bar.

DRAW also supports auto-hide while drawing: panels fade out so they don't obscure your work, then return when the cursor leaves the canvas.

A workspace is a layout preset that DRAW overlays on your own setup. It can set which panels show, the toolbox, the menus, the bars and extra keys. Leaving it puts everything back, and nothing it changes is saved to DRAW.cfg. Switch with View → Workspace, Ctrl+Shift+W, or the [WS: name] status badge. Inside a workspace, F11 shows what it hid. See Chapter 22 — Workspaces & Screenshot Annotation.

The cursor system uses your OS-native cursor for UI hovers and a custom-painted cursor for tool-specific feedback (crosshair on dot, brush footprint on brush, etc.). This is automatic and themeable.

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➡️ Next: Chapter 13 — Audio: Music & Sound Effects