␣⌘Settings sidebar

Settings has nine tabs, and at 520 pt they don’t fit its toolbar. Here it is as a sidebar of panes, as System Settings has, with the changes the first real onboarding run asked for in Folders. Click the sidebar to change panes; in Folders, try Leave Out, a click on a group’s row, a double-click on an ignore, and +; and type in Search.

What changes

  1. A sidebar of panes. One window size for every pane (about 780×660 to start), resizable and remembered, each pane scrolling inside it, as System Settings does (round 2). The window is 740 pt: a 200 pt sidebar and the same 520 pt form as today, so no pane’s layout changes. Every pane’s name shows at once, there’s room for more, and a title bar reads Settings, with the pane’s name heading the form. Advanced and Licence are pinned to the sidebar’s foot, under a rule (the user, 2026-10-22): set once but important, kept out of the everyday list.
  2. Coloured icons, from the teaser. Each pane’s glyph is drawn in a palette colour on a pale tile of the same colour, as the teaser’s feature cards are: Folders Sage, Tasks Moss, Hugo Sites Oak, Clipboard Amber, the same pairs the site uses, and Dim for General and Advanced. Terracotta is kept for #p0. On the selected row the tile goes white on Sage.
  3. Larger text, 14 pt (the user, 2026-10-22, question 7): 13 pt is macOS’s standard, as System Settings uses, but beside 1Password’s 15 pt it reads small, and its fields with it. 14 pt is the pick, to try in the build: the window grows to about 800 pt, sidebar rows to about 40 pt and icon tiles to 28 pt, and fields, pop-ups and recorders grow with the text (large controls). It follows the system’s text size setting: sizes are relative to the body style, never fixed points, so a larger system size scales Settings too.
  4. Search at the sidebar’s top (the user, question 3), as System Settings has: it matches every setting’s name, its group and its pane. The panes without a match dim, and the form lists the matches, each with its pane’s icon and “Pane › Group”; a click opens that pane. ⌘F focuses it. Try “hot”, “dock” or “ignore”.
  5. Watched folders hold the followed links. A followed symlink is a row of its own with a link folder icon and “Followed from …”, instead of a separate Symlinked folders section. A link not yet followed is offered in Sage, nested under the folder that holds it, with Follow, as submodules are offered with Ignore.
  6. Projects grouped by parent folder. Projects directly in the folder are listed as today. A subfolder holding two or more, like archive/, is one row in Sage with a folder icon, its count and Leave Out All, folded; a click anywhere on its row (no triangle; the folder icon says it opens) lists its projects on a guide line, each with a quieter Leave Out. Every project shows what it is: a repo, a vault or a site.
  7. A change shows at once. Leave Out fades the row and moves its folder into Ignored in straight away, and − drops the entry straight away, with “Updating…” and a small spinner by the header until the index agrees. ⌘Z still brings it back.
  8. Ignores are editable. A double-click on an entry edits it in place (Return saves, Esc cancels). + offers Choose Folder… or Add Pattern, which adds an empty row to type in, such as *.bak or build/.