Settings

Every setting across the seven tabs, plus the in-app updater.

In this chapter

• General
• Network
• Security
• Privacy
• Sending feedback
• Sync
• Editor
• Appearance
• The in-app updater

Open Settings with ⌘6, the gear at the bottom of the Activity Rail, or Sync settings in the account menu. The modal has a left tab bar and a Cancel / Save footer.

Note: Settings apply only when you click Save — with one deliberate exception, Privacy’s Share anonymous usage data switch, which applies immediately.

General

Request

Updates — the in-app updater controls; see below.

Network

Proxy

Note: Proxy settings are kept per-device and are never uploaded by Cloud Sync.

Security

Certificates

Warning: When SSL verification is off, Beacon shows: “SSL verification is disabled. Only use this for local development — never in production.”

Privacy

One switch, then the full disclosure of what Beacon reports about itself.

It runs whether or not Cloud Sync is enabled, and the two are unrelated: Cloud Sync uploads your work, this uploads counts about the app, and turning either one off does nothing to the other.

Turning it off stops the upload, not the recording. Beacon carries on counting your usage and capturing errors on this device, exactly as described below — it just sends none of it: no usage totals, no record of this install and no error reports leave your machine while the switch is off, and it stops looking your country up as well. Nothing already sent is removed. Feedback you deliberately send is the exception and still goes out, because you asked for it. Turn it back on and Beacon uploads what it recorded meanwhile, as far back as the limits at the end of this section allow, picking up where it left off rather than starting over.

Note: this is the one setting that does not wait for Save — it applies the moment you flip it, and Cancel or Esc will not put it back. Signing out never changes it either: an install that opted out stays opted out.

Anonymous Usage Data. Beacon reports anonymous usage data so the developers know which features matter and which ones are breaking. It is tied to a random ID generated for this install — not to your hardware, and not to your name unless you sign in (see below).

What Beacon sends

What Beacon never sends. Request URLs, headers, bodies or responses. Environment variables, globals, secrets, tokens, API keys or passwords. Collection, folder, request or workspace names. Your pre-request and test scripts. None of it is collected. The only fields Beacon fills in by itself that could physically hold any of it are the error type and error message above, which is why both are scrubbed and then thrown away outright if they still look like they hold a secret — though scrubbing isn’t perfect: a short credential with no recognizable prefix can still read as ordinary text.

The one exception is feedback you deliberately send — see below.

Usage data is written to Beacon’s local database first and uploaded in the background, so a short spell offline costs nothing. A long one does lose data: only today plus the seven most recent days are kept on this device, the queue holds the 500 most recent error reports and feedback messages and drops the oldest beyond that, a queued error report is abandoned after 8 failed uploads, and queued feedback is abandoned if it can’t be delivered within 7 days.

Those same limits bound how much comes back when you switch reporting on again after a long spell off — but note which of them applies. While the switch is off Beacon makes no upload attempts at all, so the 8-failed-uploads limit can never be reached and discards nothing; what governs is the seven-day window on daily totals and the 500-message cap on the queue.

Sending feedback

Send feedback rates Beacon and tells the developers what’s working or broken. You can open it from four places:

• the Omnibox: press ⌘K for command mode — or type > into the Omnibox yourself — and pick Send Feedback;
• the account menu in the Toolbar (when you’re signed in);
• the message icon in the Toolbar (when you’re signed out — there is no account menu there, and feedback is not gated on having an account);
• Settings → Privacy → Send feedback.

The dialog asks three things:

Alongside what you type, a submission carries this install’s ID, your account ID if you’re signed in, the app version, the platform and the country code — a subset of the install facts described above. A feedback submission carries no edge code and no time-zone name.

It works offline. Pressing Send feedback saves the review to Beacon’s local database and confirms straight away: “Thanks — your feedback is on its way. We read every review. If you’re offline, it sends itself the next time you’re connected.” Nothing is lost if you close Beacon before it uploads. If saving genuinely fails, the dialog stays exactly as you left it with your text intact — it never clears the form on an error.

Note: Esc, Cancel, and clicking outside the dialog all close it — and closing discards whatever you had typed. There is no draft.

Sync

Shows the current sync status, then (when sync is enabled) controls to Change Passphrase, Reset sync encryption (under Forgot Passphrase?), and Disable sync (optionally deleting cloud data). The full story is in Cloud accounts.

Editor

Appearance

Clicking a theme previews it immediately: the whole app repaints on the click, so you can judge a shade at full size instead of from a swatch. Nothing is committed until you press Save — Cancel, Esc, or closing Settings any other way puts your saved theme back. The code editors and the response viewer finish switching once you save, and Accent Color applies on save rather than on click.

Note: The Toolbar’s theme button is a quick three-way cycle — System → Midnight → Paper. The full set of shades lives here.

The in-app updater

Beacon compares your version against the latest public release on GitHub and can update itself. It checks quietly a few seconds after launch, and then roughly once an hour for as long as Beacon stays open — so a window you left running for days still notices a new release. Quiet checks stay quiet: if one fails, you never hear about it.

The Updates row in the General tab reflects the current state — Check for Updates before anything has been checked, then Checking for updates…, Beacon <version> is available, You're up to date (<your version>), or Update check failed with the reason underneath. Its Check for Updates button runs a check right now instead of waiting for the next hourly one, and — unlike the background check — it reports the outcome either way. When an update exists, the button walks through Install <version> → Installing… → Restart to finish. On macOS, Check for Updates… in the Beacon menu does the same thing and answers in a dialog. You can also update via Homebrew with brew upgrade --cask beacon.

Whenever a check finds a new version — at launch, on an hourly re-check, or from a check you asked for — an update toast appears in the bottom-right reading Beacon <version> is available, and an accent dot appears on the Activity Rail’s Settings gear. If the release ships notes, a What’s new row sits under the title; expand it to read what changed before you decide. Download & Install does the rest in one click — Downloading… <n>%, then Installing…, then Restart to finish — and the notes stay readable while it downloads. Dismiss the toast with its × to deal with it later.

From your next update onward, the first launch of the new version greets you with a one-time What’s new in popup carrying that release’s notes; Got it or Esc closes it, and it doesn’t come back.

Note: The popup only appears when Beacon has a record of the version you were running before. A fresh install never shows one — there is nothing to compare against — and neither did upgrading to v0.1.0, the first release that started keeping that record. Every upgrade from a v0.1.0-or-later install shows it. The record is kept per device, so each computer you run Beacon on gets the popup once per release.

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See also: Cloud accounts · History and cookies · Interface tour · Getting started