Settings

Open it from the main window or the tray → Settings. The search box at the top covers every page below (roughly 300 entries) and jumps straight to a setting. What follows mirrors the current left-hand navigation.

Navigation overview

The Settings window has 11 groups and 26 pages. If a label differs, trust what the app shows:

General

Interface: preferred language (9 options), theme (see Themes), primary/background/text colours, corner radius, font, restore defaults; launch at login, minimise to tray on close; show snippet count in the main window; search window greeting and default width, plugin window default height; usage-improvement programme; startup performance (prewarm capture window, prewarm search window, rebuild the clipboard search index at launch, background statistics, periodic temp-file cleanup); custom CSS.

Editors: code editor font size, line height, tab size, font, editor theme, word wrap (on / off / by column / bounded), line numbers, whitespace, cursor style and blinking, custom extension mapping, custom theme colours, custom languages; rich-text editor font size, line height, font, and converting Markdown on paste.

Images: where screenshots and rich text upload to. Eleven providers (sm.ms, GitHub, S3-compatible, Alibaba OSS, Qiniu, Tencent COS, UPYUN, Imgur, WebDAV, local folder, SFTP), each with its own credentials, plus a default provider.

Expand

Keyboard: the master expand switch; trigger keys and the key list, reserved trigger keys, left→right / right→left matching, case adaptation, word boundaries, expansion sound, multi-cursor jumping; FillIn and its window position (centre / cursor); inline search with its position, maximum width and height, and prefix.

Snippets: the snippet shortcuts — see Shortcuts.

Voice: the voice-input switch; push-to-talk hotkey, microphone permission; recognition channels (OpenAI Whisper / Groq / SiliconFlow SenseVoice / Zhipu GLM-ASR / StepFun / OpenRouter / ZenMux / custom — endpoint, key, model, language, test connection); whether a finished utterance is dictated or expands a snippet; on-device engines (Qwen3 0.6B, Sherpa, with model downloads and mirrors, languages, idle keep-alive); accuracy self-check (record a phrase, recognise it through another channel, vocabulary bias, compute accuracy).

Capture

Screen: colour picker default format; border width, mask colour, anchors and their stroke; window auto-detection, overlapping-window selection, an ignored-process list, UI-element detection, double-click to edit, minimum child-window size; pin-window always-on-top; GIF recording (resolution, frame rate, quality, max frames, cursor visibility and click highlight, countdown); image quality; manual / quick / auto-save folders and filename templates.

OCR: engine (auto / PaddleOCR), model (Server / Mobile), device (CPU / GPU), model download and open-folder; how results are presented (pin / paste into the front window / copy / modal).

Screenshot shortcuts: global shortcuts for region, full screen, delayed, application and scrolling capture, and GIF recording.

Free tier: 3 scrolling captures per day, 10 OCR runs, GIF capped at 15 seconds with a watermark.

Clipboard

Basics: enable clipboard monitoring; paste by single or double click; window position (remember last / screen centre / follow cursor); keep the original clipboard after selecting; always on top; strip formatting when copying and pasting; move duplicates to the top; ignore items above a size limit; history retention days, maximum entries, purge expired records, delete history.

Window

Window: global shortcuts for switching the main window, the search window, and the clipboard window. These sit apart from the snippet and screenshot shortcuts but go through the same handling.

AI

Models: the default provider; per-provider enable and configuration of API key, base URL, Azure Deployment Name and model, with a model list you can refresh and pick from.

Skills: custom prompt context; the skill list (name, type, response format, provider, order, pinned, whether to use CodeExpander MCP tools, prompt).

MCP: the master switch for AI tools (MCP) in in-app chat, and CodeExpander as an MCP server — see MCP server.

Plugins

Backend: enable HTTP (resident) mode, idle timeout, maximum resident backends, PATH prefix; the list of running backends (refresh / stop).

NPM: npm access token; discover plugins on npm; the publish form (pick a plugin, bump type, package name, publish).

Library

Sync: third-party storage (sign in to GitHub / Gitee or use a personal token; WebDAV server, folder, username, password); full sync and its interval; test connection, sync to local, conflict resolution (keep local / keep remote / merge); the GitHub API and GitLab addresses. CE Cloud has moved to License. See Sync.

Backup: local automatic backup on/off, what to back up (snippets only / all clipboard / favourites only), backup folder, interval, maximum retained copies, back up now. See local automatic backup.

Transfer: export JSON (choose what to include); import a JSON or TextExpander export, either merging or overwriting. Share packs are covered under deep links.

Storage: the current library identity; the locations of the snippet library, captures, logs and temp directories, with open-folder buttons; export diagnostic logs, copy diagnostic info, refresh disk usage; and the dangerous operations — clear data and reset the app (a reset keeps your machine ID and licence fields).

Developers

Local API: enable the local API, pick a port, open the OpenAPI docs. See local REST API.

Runtimes: custom script interpreters (name, executable path and detection, execution mode, arguments, file extensions, test, add from preset). Pro.

License

Lifetime: machine ID and activation code, activate and unbind; the device-slot list (current device, unbind, 24-hour cooldown); optional WeChat binding (code, sign in with WeChat, bind to the current code); Pro entitlements. See Activation.

CE Cloud subscription: subscription status (personal cloud sync / team seats and expiry) and CE Cloud entitlements; the panel lets you sign in and out, sync now, open the web library, sync my snippets, shared groups, and see the device list with the last sync time. See Login and web library.

Help

Version: the current version and check for updates (store builds may hide the updater).

FAQ: the in-app FAQ.

Support: official support channels, the contact address, and whether you would like to help promote the app.

Usage statistics are not in Settings — see Statistics and search. There is no browser-extension settings page; the product has no Chrome extension.

Shortcuts

Settings → Shortcuts has three groups: window, snippets and screenshot (matching Window, Expand → Snippets, and Capture → Screenshot above). They go through the same handling as the buttons and the tray.

• Window: switch the main window, open the search window, switch the clipboard window. The default search shortcut differs by platform — trust what the settings page shows.
• Snippets: create from clipboard, new snippet, edit the last expanded snippet, expand the last one again. Any file can also carry its own global hotkey, which suits a handful of very frequent snippets (Pro).
• Screenshot: region / full screen / window / scrolling / start or stop GIF. On macOS the region default is usually ⌘⇧A. See Capture.

Each group can be reset to its defaults. In a FillIn window, Cmd/Ctrl+Enter confirms. In the search window, Enter inserts and Esc closes. The master switch lives under prevent expansion.

Themes

Pick a theme under Settings → General → Interface. It is not a light / dark / system choice: the options are Gilded, Ink, Cinnabar, Celadon, Indigo, Atlantic, Serene, Illustrated and Dark, plus Custom. Custom lets you set the primary colour, background, text colour, corner radius and font (some of it is Pro), and restore defaults if you go too far. The web library uses the same palette and the same three panes. See web library.

System tray

The app lives in the tray. Closing the main window can minimise to tray (Settings → General → Interface); it is not the same as quitting. The menu usually offers: open the main window, the various capture and GIF actions, clipboard, enable/disable expansion, check for updates (possibly hidden on store builds) and export logs. While a capture is running, the tray can start and stop recording. The master expand switch and prevent-expansion are the same toggle.

Deep links

Once the desktop app is installed, someone can send you a codeexpander:// link. The app picks it up when you open it.

There is no browser extension. For how web login works, see Login.

Local REST API

To list local snippets from your own little script: open Settings → Developers → Local API, turn it on and note the port. The page shows you the local address, and the API description opens in a browser. This endpoint is reachable only from this computer and is never exposed to the network. Use it to read snippets; keep changing the library in the app, or go through MCP. The two are separate services with separate ports.

MCP server

To have an AI generate a well-formed snippet from Cursor: open Settings → AI → MCP, enable it, copy the config snippet and paste it into Cursor or Claude Desktop. The server runs only on this computer. What it can do is described in the app; typically that means looking up snippets, capturing the screen, recognising text and inserting. The AI assistant in the search window can also turn on “use MCP tools”. Plugins you build with it show up in the plugin list. For chatting, see AI.

The syntax-highlighting language list is under language support.