The general pane of the preferences window contains these options:
- Launch at Login:
if enabled Hot Plan will be launched automatically when the user logs in
- Default Email Client:
select the email client Hot Plan will use when sending emails
- Ask before Deleting Plans:
if enabled Hot Plan will display a sheet asking for confirmation before deleting a plan; if disabled plans will be deleted immediately
- Ask before Deleting Actions:
if enabled Hot Plan will display a sheet asking for confirmation before deleting an action; if disabled actions will be deleted immediately
- Display Plan Completion Status:
if enabled each plan will display a tag at the right of its name showing its current completion status (updated in real time)
- Show:
if the above option is enabled, you can select the type of value displayed in the tag:
- Uncompleted Actions: the number of uncompleted actions
- Completed Percentage: the global completion percentage for all actions contained in the plan
- Uncompleted Percentage: like the above option, but it shows the uncompleted amount instead
- Display Plan Completion Status in Dock:
if enabled it will display a tag on the Hot Plan application icon in the Dock showing the completion status for the currently selected plan (updated in real time)
- Show Menubar Icon With Expiring Actions:
if enabled it will display a black checkbox icon in the menubar; when selected it will display a menu with a list of expiring actions. You can limit the number of actions displayed using the Show Action control.
The hotkeys pane of the preferences window contains these options:
- Main Window Hotkey:
configure the hotkey you can use to show and hide the main Hot Plan window
- Quick Entry Window Hotkey:
configure the hotkey you can use to display the quick entry window for creating new actions
- Bookmark Grabber Hotkey:
configure the hotkey used to enable the bookmark grabber feature
- Text Grabber Hotkey:
configure the hotkey used to enable the text grabber feature
- Main Window Position:
decide where the main window will be displayed when opened using its hotkey
- Play Hotkey Sound:
if enabled, it will play the selected sound every time the bookmark grabber or the text grabber hotkeys are pressed
Entering a new hotkey is easy: click on the hotkey field and just press the key sequence you want to use.
If the sequence has been accepted, it will be displayed in the hotkey field and will be enabled, otherwise a beep will warn you that the sequence is not valid.
A key sequence must contain the command key and it's recommended to use at least one additional modifier key (shift, control or option), moreover hotkeys are system-wide, so if another application is already using the entered sequence, it will be refused.
The labels pane of the preferences window works just like the corresponding pane in the Finder preferences window where you can customize the names associated with the color labels; these names will be displayed in the user interface menus related to the label colors.
The priorities pane of the preferences window works just like the above pane; here you can customize the names associated with the priorities popup button in the action table view and in the action pane.
The notifications pane of the preferences window contains these options:
- Enabled Notification When Setting Target Date:
if enabled, when you set the target date for an action, notifications will be enabled automatically for that action (and viceversa notifications will be disabled if the target date gets cancelled)
- Play Sound:
if enabled, the sound corresponding to the selected name will be played every time the notification window will be displayed due to expiring actions
- Bounce Dock Icon:
if enabled, the dock icon of Hot Plan will start bouncing every time the notification window will be displayed due to expiring actions
- Add Event to iCal When Setting Target Date:
if enabled and when there is a target date set for the action, a corresponding event is created in iCal. This event will be kept in sync with Hot Plan, so any change in both Hot Plan or iCal will be mirrored back in the other app
- iCal Calendar:
the calendar the new event will be created into, the list shows all available calendars in iCal excluding read only ones
- Event Title Format:
the format of the title of the event created in iCal which can include only the action title or the plan title too
- Play Sound:
if enabled it will associate the selected sound with the event created in iCal and it will be played upon notification
- Send Notifications to Growl/Send to Notification Center:
if enabled it will send notifications to Growl. If Growl is not installed it will display them with a Growl style notification popup on the right side of the screen, unless you are running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later, in this case it will use the system-wide Notification Center.
The clipboard pane of the preferences window contains these options:
- Insert Grabbing Date for Bookmarks:
if enabled the date at which a bookmark has been grabbed will be stored in the notes field
- Insert Grabbing Date for Text:
if enabled the date at which a text clip has been grabbed will be stored in the notes field just before the grabbed information
- After Grabbing Text Insert:
if insert grabbing date for text is disabled, Hot Plan can format multiple grabbed text clips in different ways:
- Nothing: just appends new clips after the previous ones
- New Line: adds a new line before appending a new clip
- Smart New Line: adds a new line before appending a new clip if the previous clip ends with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark; adds a space if needed to separate words
- Empty Line: adds a full empty line before appending the new clip
The advanced pane of the preferences window contains these options:
- Set:
change the location of the Hot Plan database, it can be useful if you want to put it in an external portable drive to easily move it among different machines
- Default:
move the Hot Plan database to its default location
- Backup:
create a backup of the current database to a specified location
- Restore:
restore a backup of the Hot Plan database from a specified location, the current database will be closed and renamed, so it won't be overwritten
- Optimize:
optimizes the database as specified in the Optimizations page.