Settings overview
Where settings live and how they're organized.
Mel keeps its settings in one full-window Settings view inside the app. Every control you see there is a real setting — a toggle only appears once the behavior behind it is actually wired up, so there are no dead switches.
Opening Settings
Press Ctrl+, (⌘, on a Mac), or click the avatar in the top-right of the titlebar and choose Settings. The same menu also has What's new, the keyboard-shortcuts reference, Documentation, Feedback, View app data (opens the folder Mel keeps its settings in, ~/.mel), Provider keys (BYOK) and Billing and Usage — those two open Settings on their page. Press esc or click the ✕ in the corner to close the view.
Layout
The view is split in two:
- A left nav with a search box. It matches page names and a few related words (typing
sshfinds Melt,permissionsfinds Agent mode,apifinds API keys). When nothing matches, the nav says so and tells you to clear the search. - A right content pane showing the selected page's controls.
Some pages stand on their own in the nav. Others sit in three folding groups: Agents, Code and Cloud platform. The groups start folded. The group that holds the open page opens by itself, so the page you are on is always in view; click a group's name to fold or unfold it. While you type in the search box, every group with a match opens and a group with no match is hidden.
The pages, in the order the nav lists them:
| In the nav | Page | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| On its own | Account | Sign-in, log out, the app version — see Account |
| On its own | Profile | Your name, display name, time zone, email address and photo |
| On its own | Security | Your password, the devices signed in to your account, and recent sign-ins |
| Agents | AI | Agent input, thinking, voice, desktop control, default models, your own model keys |
| Agents | Agent mode | What the agent may do without asking — see Tools & approvals |
| Agents | Connectors | Partner tools on your own keys — see Connectors |
| Agents | Library | Skills, prompts and MCP servers — see Library |
| Agents | Knowledge | Your rules and MEL.md — see Rules & MEL.md |
| Agents | Third party CLI agents | The toolbar shown over Claude Code and Codex — see CLI agents |
| On its own | Billing and Usage | Plan, credits, add-ons, usage history — see Billing and usage |
| Code | Indexing and projects | The code index and your project folders — see Projects & folders |
| Code | Editor and Code Review | Line numbers, auto save, the review panel, the explorer, file search |
| Cloud platform | API keys | Create and revoke your Mel API keys — see Mel API keys |
| On its own | Team | Start a Business team, its seats and its members — see Teams & Business |
| On its own | Appearance | Theme, text, cursor, blocks, panes |
| On its own | Features | Sessions, notifications, updates, blocks |
| On its own | Keyboard shortcuts | Every shortcut, searchable and rebindable — see Keyboard shortcuts |
| On its own | Melt | SSH sessions and full-screen programs |
| On its own | Referrals | An invite link to share (referral rewards are coming soon) |
| On its own | Privacy | What stays on your computer and what reaches Mel's server |
| On its own | About | Version and release info |
Where settings persist
Changes apply and save the moment you flip a toggle — there is no separate Save button. Everything on these pages is stored in a single JSON file:
~/.mel/settings.jsonOn Windows the file is %APPDATA%\mel\config\settings.json.
The </> Open settings file button at the bottom of the left nav opens that file directly in Mel's built-in editor, so you can inspect or hand-edit it. Fields you leave out fall back to their defaults, and out-of-range values are clamped (for example, the block cap never exceeds 5000).
Many toggles can also be flipped from the command palette: type the setting's name.
A few things live elsewhere on purpose:
- Tab-bar preferences persist in
~/.mel/tab_settings.json. - Conversations, Drive objects, and your sign-in token live under
~/.local/share/mel/— see Privacy.