Choose Dottie > Settings Command+, to open the Settings window. Settings apply to the whole app and are remembered between launches.
Pixel Perfect: smooths freehand strokes drawn with the Pencil and Pen (the Airbrush is intentionally excluded, since it always uses its randomised spray), and applies to vector line/shape objects too, so corners don’t double up on a pixel.
Pressure: when Adjust brush size with pressure is on, a Force Touch trackpad, a pressure-sensitive tablet, or an iPad via Sidecar with Apple Pencil scales the nib up to your chosen brush size. Choose a response Curve, and turn on Invert pressure to make a lighter touch draw larger.
Show grid: toggles the on-screen grid, same as View > Show Grid.
Style: chooses the grid type—Gridlines, Centre Dots, Corner Dots, or Crosshairs.
Opacity: sets how strongly the grid shows, from 25% to 100%.
Line width: sets the grid line width from 0.5 to 4 px (default 2). A thinner line keeps the grid subtle at lower zoom levels; a thicker one is easier to read on high-resolution displays.
Default grid and Default tile: the grid and tile intervals used when you create a new document (1×1 with tiles off unless you change them; a tile axis of 0 means off). They do not change the document you already have open—use View > Grid Size for that.
The Display tab controls Dottie's CRT filter, an on-screen post-process look that mimics an old CRT monitor. It's applied live while you work and is never baked into exports.
Enable on canvas and Enable on previews: turn the CRT effect on for the main canvas and/or the sidebar and floating previews independently.
Only at 100% zoom: limits the effect to actual-size viewing, so it doesn't distort your view while zoomed in to edit.
Darkness: scanline intensity.
Thickness: scanline thickness.
Curvature: screen curvature amount.
Bloom: glow around bright pixels.
Vignette: darkened corners.
Black background: fills the area around the canvas with black for a darkened-room feel.
Turn off Show setup dialog if you’d rather new documents open straight away using saved defaults instead of showing the New Document dialog each time.
The defaults below set what a new document starts with—Preset, Width, Height, Pixel Aspect, Palette, and Background. These are the same fields shown in the New Document dialog, so whichever way you work, a new canvas begins exactly how you like it.
Tip Even with the dialog turned on, holding Option while creating a document skips it and applies these defaults.
The Presets pane lists your custom New Document presets. Click + to add a preset—give it a name, a canvas size, and an optional pixel aspect ratio. Double-click a row to edit it, or select one or more rows and click − to remove them. Custom presets appear in the New Document preset picker below the built-in systems.
Maximum size sets the largest canvas the size dialogs allow: 1024 × 1024 by default, up to 4096 × 4096. Bigger canvases use more memory and make whole-canvas operations slower, so raise it only if you need the room.