App Settings

Griptape Nodes Desktop has its own settings screen, separate from the engine and editor settings you reach from the editor's Settings menu. App Settings covers what the application itself owns: how it closes, which theme it wears, the workspace it hands to the engine, your license, log files, and how the app updates itself.

Opening App Settings

Click your name in the top-right corner of the window, then choose App Settings. If you activated with a license key instead of signing in with a Griptape account, the button reads Interactive license (or whatever your license type is) rather than your name.

Click Back to editor in the top-left corner when you're done. Most changes save as soon as you make them; the places where they don't are called out below.

Note

App Settings is not the same as the editor's Settings menu. That menu configures the engine and the editor — canvas theme, autosave, API keys and secrets, MCP servers, library settings — and is documented in the editor overview. Only Griptape Nodes Desktop has App Settings; if you run the engine yourself and use the editor in a browser, see Configuration instead.

General

Confirm before closing shows a confirmation dialog when you quit. Quitting stops the engine, which cancels anything still running, so leaving this on is a good idea if you run long workflows.

Appearance

Theme sets the application chrome to Light, Dark, or System (follow your operating system's setting).

Show system monitor adds a strip below the main navigation with live CPU, memory, and GPU utilization, updated every second. Useful when you're running local models and want to see whether you're out of headroom.

Workspace & Libraries

Workspace Directory is where Griptape Nodes stores your project files and generated assets. Use Browse to pick a different folder. Changing it doesn't move your existing files, so point it at a folder you can find again. See Workspace for how the engine uses it.

Import existing configuration opens the Import Configuration dialog, which looks in the usual places for a Griptape Nodes configuration from an engine you installed and set up yourself. Pick the one you want under Select configuration to import and the app adopts its settings, including its workspace directory, so you don't have to re-enter them. If nothing turns up, use Browse for config file or Scan home directory.

Additional Libraries installs optional node libraries alongside the built-in ones:

• Install Griptape Nodes Diffusers Library — media generation with Diffusers. It wants a powerful machine, and some models need an NVIDIA GPU with CUDA.
• Install Griptape Cloud Library — nodes for Griptape Cloud services.

Both are also installable later from Manage → Library Management; see Libraries.

Nothing in this section takes effect until you click Apply Changes, which stops the engine, reconfigures it, and starts it again. Save your workflow first.

Engine

Note

This section only appears if you activated with a license key, which puts the app in direct engine mode. If you signed in with a Griptape account, you won't see it — restarting and managing the engine lives on the Engine page instead.

Direct Engine WebSocket URL is the address the local engine binds to and the app dials when it talks to the engine directly. The default, ws://127.0.0.1:18125, is a loopback socket that only your machine can reach. Change it only if your engine listens somewhere else, then restart the engine to apply it.

License

If your organization runs Griptape Nodes on license keys, this section is where you manage them. Each activated license shows as a card with its organization, license ID, type, and expiry date, plus an Active badge when it's the one in use. Use the pencil icon to give it a friendlier name, or Remove to deactivate it on this machine. Making a different license the active one restarts the engine.

Griptape Server Endpoint points the engine at an on-premises Griptape server for cloud and license requests instead of the default https://cloud.griptape.ai. Restart the engine after changing it.

To add another key, paste it into the box and click Add & Activate.

For the full activation walkthrough, see Using the Admin Server. Administrators issuing the keys should start with the Admin Dashboard.

Logging and Diagnostics

Turn these on before reproducing a problem you want to report.

• Write engine logs to file — saves engine output to a log file. Files rotate at 10MB. With this on, you can also export engine logs from the Engine page.
• Write application logs to file — saves application and editor logs, also rotating at 10MB. Export asks whether you want the current session or a specific time range, then writes the logs out to a file you can attach to a bug report.
• Log Retention — how long to keep log files before deleting them automatically. Pick a number and a unit (Days, Months, or Years); the default is 7 days. Check Don't delete log files to keep them forever.

See Troubleshooting for what to look for once you have the logs.

Updates

Current Version is the app version you're running, and Check for Updates looks for a newer one right now instead of waiting for the next launch.

Update Behavior controls what happens when an update is found:

Setting	What it does
Auto-Update	Downloads and installs updates automatically on startup.
Prompt for Update	Shows a notification banner when an update is available. This is the default.
Silence Updates	Doesn't check for or notify you about updates.

Show release notes after updates displays a summary of what changed after the app updates itself.

Release channels

Release Channel picks which builds the app updates to.

Channel	What you get
Stable	Tested releases. This is the default and what you want unless you have a reason to be on Nightly.
Nightly	A fresh build published every day, bundling pre-release engine and editor builds along with the app. Versions look like 0.22.0-nightly.20260611.123.

Nightly builds go out once a day, and only the 14 most recent are kept, so a nightly install left alone for longer than a couple of weeks will jump several versions when it next updates.

Warning

Nightly builds are cut from the latest development work rather than a tested release. They can contain bugs, half-finished features, and changes that get reverted. Don't use Nightly for production work, and save your workflows often if you do run it.

Switching channels takes effect at the next update check, whether that's the next time you launch the app, the check that runs every few hours in the background, or the moment you click Check for Updates. You don't need to reinstall, and switching back to Stable works even though the stable version number is lower than the nightly you were on. Your workspace, workflows, and settings are untouched either way.

If you install the engine yourself instead of using the app, the equivalent is the pre-release engine channel described in the FAQ.

Griptape Cloud API Key

The API key the app provisioned for you, hidden by default. Show reveals it and Copy puts it on your clipboard — handy when you want to use the same key with a manually installed engine or a script. Treat it like a password. This section only appears if the app has a key for you, so you won't see it if you activated with a license key instead of signing in.

App Data Locations

The directories where the app keeps its own data, separate from your workspace. Open reveals a folder in Finder, Explorer, or your file manager. Log files are not in here; export those from Logging and Diagnostics or, for engine logs, the Engine page.

Environment Information

A snapshot of exactly what you're running: app version and build, the bundled editor version, the Python interpreter and its installed packages, the Griptape Nodes engine version and bundle directory, and your platform details. Refresh re-reads it.

Copy puts the whole report on your clipboard and Export... saves it to a file. Attach one of those to any bug report you file.