Settings
Open Suisai’s Settings with ⌘, or choose Suisai → Settings from the macOS menu bar.
Settings are organized into five tabs: General, Library, Color, Code, and Shortcuts.
General
The General tab controls Suisai’s appearance, window behavior, and how it opens.
Appearance
Theme lets you choose between Suisai’s two appearances:
- Washi: A warm, paper-inspired light theme.
- Sumi: A dark, ink-inspired theme.
- System: Follow your Mac’s current appearance setting.
Type Size offers Default, Larger, and Largest, allowing you to adjust the size of text throughout Suisai’s interface.
Brush Mark Behind the Palette controls whether Suisai’s decorative brush mark appears behind the palette content.
Windows and startup
Keep Above Other Apps keeps Suisai’s palette windows visible while you work in other applications.
Collapse to Strip When Inactive automatically reduces palette windows to their compact form when they are no longer active.
Opens To determines what Suisai restores when launched:
- Where I Left Off: Reopens your previous windows, including their positions and sizes.
- A Clean Window: Starts with a new palette card at its remembered window position.
Hang Direction controls the preferred direction when using Suisai’s hanging-window arrangement.
Behind a transparent color
When a swatch contains transparency, its appearance depends on the background beneath it.
Behind a Transparent Color lets you choose how transparent swatches are displayed.
| Option | Display |
|---|---|
| Checkerboard | Shows transparency against a checkerboard pattern |
| Ground | Uses the current window’s background |
| White | Shows the color against white |
| Black | Shows the color against black |
| Custom Color | Uses a background color you choose |
| Strips | Shows the other five backgrounds side by side |
Strips is particularly useful when you want to understand how a transparent color will appear against different backgrounds without changing the setting repeatedly.
The selected preview style applies wherever Suisai displays swatches.
Updates and license, direct download
The direct-download version of Suisai includes two additional settings.
Check for Updates Daily controls whether Suisai checks for available updates through its separate, sandboxed update helper. You can disable automatic checks.
License displays the application’s registration information and provides an option to remove the installed license.
These controls don’t appear in the Mac App Store version. Apple handles its updates and purchases, so no separate Suisai license key is required.
For details about update checks and network access, see the Privacy Policy.
Library
The Library tab controls the locations Suisai searches for palettes.
Scanning and system palettes
Rescan on Launch tells Suisai to refresh its watched locations when the application starts.
Include macOS System Palettes includes the color lists available through macOS, such as Apple, Crayons, System, and Web Safe Colors, together with color lists installed in the user’s Colors folder.
Watched folders
Add folders containing palette files to make their collections available in the Palette Library.
Each watched location displays its path and the number of palettes Suisai can currently find.
You can give a location a nickname, which becomes the heading for that group of palettes in the Library.
Suisai retains access through a security-scoped bookmark, allowing it to return to the selected folder in later sessions without requiring you to choose it every time.
Including stylesheets
For a watched folder, enable Include Stylesheets to make supported CSS, SCSS, Sass, and Less files available in the Palette Library.
When enabled, Suisai searches those files for named color variables and includes qualifying stylesheets alongside the folder’s regular palette files.
This option is off by default.
See The Palette Library for the stylesheet indexing rules and supported file types.
Managing a watched folder
Open the chevron menu beside a watched location for the available actions:
| Action | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Rename… | Change the location’s Library nickname |
| Reveal in Finder | Open the location in Finder |
| Stop Watching | Remove the location from Suisai’s watched folders |
| Choose Folder Again… | Select the folder again or renew access |
| Reconnect Folder | Restore an unavailable location |
The last two options depend on whether the location is currently accessible.
If a folder is on an unmounted drive or otherwise unavailable, Suisai marks it OFFLINE rather than removing it from the Library.
Bookmarks can also follow folders that have moved, with Settings showing the updated location when macOS can resolve it.
Library scanning reads the files in watched folders without changing them. Explicit operations such as saving an opened palette are separate from scanning.
Color
The Color tab controls the color profiles and conversion settings Suisai uses when working with colors.
RGB Working Space selects the RGB color profile used for applicable color operations. Available profiles come from those installed on your Mac.
CMYK Profile selects the profile used for CMYK color handling. Choose a profile appropriate to the printing or production conditions you’re working with.
LAB Illuminant selects the reference white used for LAB color values. Suisai provides D50 and D65.
Rendering Intent controls how colors are mapped when converting between color spaces or profiles with different reproducible ranges.
These settings are particularly relevant when working with colors intended for print or when comparing values across different color profiles.
Code
The Code tab controls how Suisai writes individual color values when copying or dragging them into other applications.
Output format
Output Format determines the code format Suisai uses for ordinary color copying.
Suisai supports 43 individual color formats, covering web development, Apple frameworks, and other programming environments.
Individual palette windows can also have their own selected FORMAT setting.
Favorite formats
Favorite Formats controls which code formats are shown prominently in the FORMAT and Copy As menus.
Choose the formats you use most often so they’re available without navigating through the complete list.
The remaining formats stay accessible through Show all and the platform-specific submenus.
Your favorite selection is retained across application updates.
Formatting preferences
The remaining settings control how applicable color values are written.
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| Remove White Space | Removes optional spacing from supported code formats |
| Use Fraction Numbers | Uses fractional component values where the format supports them |
| Decimal Places | Controls numeric precision |
| ALL CAPS | Writes HEX letters in uppercase |
| Prefix # | Controls the HEX prefix where optional |
A live preview shows sample output in three formats, making it easier to see the effect of a change before copying a color.
Settings that affect exports
Some Code settings apply to whole-palette exports as well.
ALL CAPS affects HEX capitalization in supported text-based exports, including CSS, SCSS, Sass, Less, JSON, XML, Markdown, SVG, and HTML.
Prefix # applies where HEX values are written as data and the prefix is optional. Formats that
require # as part of their syntax retain it.
Whitespace, fractional components, and decimal precision primarily affect individual values copied or dragged from Suisai.
For the complete explanation, see Copying and exporting.
Shortcuts
The Shortcuts tab controls the global Quick Pick to Clipboard command.
Quick Pick opens the macOS color-sampling loupe while you’re working in another application, without bringing Suisai to the front.
You can enable or disable the global shortcut and select from the available combinations:
- ⌥⌘P
- ⌃⌥⌘P
- ⌥⌘K
- ⌃⌥⌘C
The default is ⌥⌘P.
If another application is already using a combination, Suisai marks it TAKEN so you can choose another.
For shortcuts used within palettes, the Bench, Nōtan, and the Library, see Keyboard shortcuts, or press ⌘/ to open Suisai’s built-in shortcut reference.