The Settings tab

Content

• Start up
• General
• Playlist editor
• Icons/Help
• System-wide shortcuts
• Power
• Cache
• Categories
• Settings menus

Key topics: Start BioniX at Windows start-up, ignore some images/files, can change the BioniX window opacity, choose the Panic image, set the SSD friendly folder, create categories for your wallpapers, create keyboard shortcuts to the most used functions, set the preview resampler.

Animation settings

Payback settings gor animated GIF images.

Note: it is not possible to dothe same for video (avi, etc) files.

Start Up settings

You can choose what BioniX will do at start-up:

Start BioniX Wallpaper at Windows start-up - You can set BioniX to run at Windows startup.

Start minimized - Start minimized to system tray (don't disturb user)

When BioniX starts, it will:

When BioniX Desktop Background Switcher starts, it can do the following:

• start the countdown - It will change the desktop wallpaper after a specified interval
• change the wallpaper instantly - BioniX will change the desktop wallpaper immediately after its start-up
• change wallpaper once, then shutdown itself - It will start the countdown and change the desktop wallpaper when the time is up. After that, BioniX will close itself.
• not change the wallpaper - BioniX will do nothing. BioniX will start but it will not change the wallpaper until you press the Play button.

Graphic User Interface settings

Lets you change the font size and how the embeded help system behaves (how long the tooltips will be shown on screen).

 General settings

Window opacity

Sets the transparency for the whole application. A value of 1 means that BioniX Background Switcher is totally transparent. A value of 255 will make BioniX Background Switcher fully opaque.

Make sound

If checked, BioniX Desktop Background Switcher will make a sound every time it changes the wallpaper. You can enter you sound file.

External image editor

Holds the path to your preferred image editor. This editor is used when you press the Edit in external editor menu located under the Wallpaper main menu.

Work folder (SSD Friendly folder)

This is the path where BioniX will put its temporary files, the default paylist, the thumbnails (shown in the Preview panel), the wallpapers stripped from web and the categories. Users that have a SSD harddrive can use this folder in order to reduce the wearing of the SSD drive.

Utils

• Create desktop shortcut - Create a shortcut to BioniX Desktop Background Switcher on desktop.
• Create start menu shortcut - Create a shortcut to BioniX Desktop Background Switcher in 'Start' menu.
• Choose 'Display' font - Choose a font for the green display in the main window.
• Restore wallpaper - Restore previous wallpaper (the wallpaper that you had on desktop before installing BioniX Desktop Background Switcher). Depending on your Windows settings this option may not always work.
• Reset wall coordinates - Some programs set the wallpaper coordinates to strange values. This will reset them back to default value. This is executed when BioniX runs for the first time.
• Associate - It will associate playlist files. This means that if you double-click a playlist file, BioniX Desktop Background Switcher will start and will run that playlist.

In this tab you can set what the Delete key should do, to choose the font and background color for the Local playlist and to instruct BioniX to ignore specific wallpapers.

'Delete' key will:

Pressing the Delete key while in the Playlist window will delete all selected images. In this tab you can choose if the Delete key will delete the selected from playlist and hard drive or only from playlist.

• Remove the current selected file from playlist - When you press the Delete key BioniX Desktop Background Switcher will remove the selected file from playlist but it will leave it on the hard drive. The Control+Delete key combination will delete the file from playlist and Hard drive too.
• Remove the current selected file from playlist and hard drive - When you press the Delete key BioniX Desktop Background Switcher will delete the selected file from playlist and from disk too. The Control+Delete key combination will delete the file only from playlist and keep it on your computer.

Delete the file to RecycleBin - Check this box to delete the file to Recycle Bin so you can recover it later.

Show confirmation - if checked, BioniX Desktop Background Switcher will ask you to confirm deletion of wallpapers from your hard disk.

Limit accepted images

• Don't accept images smaller than x KB - If you drag and drop into the Playlist an image that is smaller than this value, BioniX Background Switcher will ignore it and it will not add it to the playlist.
• Don't accept images larger than x KB - If you drag and drop into the Playlist an image that is larger than this value, BioniX Background Switcher will ignore it and it will not add it to the playlist.
• Reject invalid images - Check if the images are valid before adding them to playlist. If active, this function will slow down a bit the program when you add images to the playlist. Here you can choose to delete the invalid images from disk too.
• Also delete them from disk will automatically move the invalid images to Recycle Bin.
• Automatically remove duplicates from playlist - Checks is the playlist contains the same image multiple time. This function may slow down the program when you add multiple images to playlist.

Ignore list

Add your strings (such as Private, Business or DoNotAdd) in the Ignore list field and BioniX Desktop Background Switcher will exclude wallpapers to playlist if their name contain at least one special keyword you added. You must enter one keyword per line. The list is not case sensitive.

Trick: You can put '.png' in your Ignore List to load all images except PNGs.

Playlist color

Here you can set the font and the background color for Local Playlist Editor. The same color will be applied also to the Log window.

Cycle wallpapers evenly

If checked, BioniX will cycle through playlist more evenly based on the info in Played column in the Local playlist tab. This means that no image will be used twice (or often) while other images are not played at all. For example, BioniX will try NOT to set an wallpaper that has the played value 1 and it prefers to set an wallpaper with the played value 0. You can reset the 'Played' column to zero so BioniX Background Switcher will start over playing the wallpapers.

From this tab you can choose the icon behavior and to show or not the hints.

Icon behavior

Here you can set BioniX to show an animated icon or the remaining time in system tray.

Minimize to system tray - Will put application's icon in the system tray while it's minimized.

Close to system tray - BioniX will be minimized to system tray instead of being closed. To close the application, right click on its icon and choose 'Close BioniX'.

Tool tips

BioniX Desktop Background Switcher will pop-up a small tip window if you hold the mouse above a control (button, checkbox, scrollbar, etc). This window will display information about that control. Here you can control how quick this window should appear and disappear.

Delay for pop-up hints x ms - The delay before the pop-up appearance. Increase this value if the pop-up becomes annoying causing a system slow down in the moment of its appearance. the default value is 350 milliseconds.

Hide the hint window after x ms - The preview pop-up window will automatically vaporize after this amount of time. The value is in milliseconds. Default value is 4000 milliseconds = 4 seconds.

User-defined keyboard shortcuts

Define here your own keyboard shortcuts. Note: These shortcuts are system-wide, meaning that you don't have to have BioniX focused (it can be minimized/hidden into the system tray bar) in order to have these shortcuts work!

System settings

The user can define system-wide shortcuts. A system-wide shortcut is a combination of keys that you can press to activate a function (for example "Next wallpaper") in BioniX, even if BioniX is not focused (it is minimized for example).

BioniX Desktop Background Switcher is power efficient. You can set it to postpone wallpaper rotation when CPU is busy.

In this tab you can also find information about your battery status.

Announce when the laptop switches from AC to batteries - BioniX Background Switcher will print a message directly on the screen to inform you that your laptop has switched to batteries.

Don't change the wallpaper when running on batteries - Check this function if battery life is important to you. Alternatively, you can choose to change the wallpaper at a bigger interval of time (15 minutes or higher).

Don't change the wallpaper is CPU utilization is above X %  - Useful when playing games or other CPU-hungry applications. Set the value to 101% to disable it.

You can find how much memory BioniX Background Switcher uses in the Info tab.

Cache thumbnails

Activating the Cache thumbnails checkbox BioniX Background Switcher will store the thumbnail of the image you see in the Preview panel for faster access but it may take some hard drive space. The space can be retrieved back by pressing the Reset cache.

Reset cache

Deletes all the thumbnails created by BioniX. BioniX will recreate them, but it might take a while and the playlist navigation will be slow until all thumbnails are rebuilt.

Resamples quality

More information about resamplers here.

Sort wallpapers

You can add, delete or rename categories in this tab. Click the Apply button to save changes to categories.

'Categories' folder - Enter here the full path to the folder used by the ' Move to category' function (available when you right click an image in the Local playlist editor). Default is 'C:\Users\XXXXX\Pictures\BioniX categories\' where XXXXX is your computer user name. After you change this field you need to RESTART THE PROGRAM!

 Screensaver

At this point, the screensaver is still experiments. However, it will not affect how BioniX performs, since it is an external program.

View menu

From this menu you have quickly access to any tab and to some options:

• Show or hide the wallpaper preview panel by accessing the Preview panel option. You can also use the shortcut for this by pressing Control + M keys.
• Minimalistic interface shows a minimalistic BioniX Wallpaper interface. You can do this instantly by pressing the F9 key.
• Clock as wallpaper  - shows a big clock on your desktop as wallpaper. BioniX will refresh the clock wallpaper every 1 second.

From this menu you have quickly access to any tab:

• Wallpaper source - by accessing one of the options: Local playlist, Lock on folder, Strip wallpapers, Flickr wallpapers, Dynamic web wallpaper or by pressing the assigned key shortcut. Any option will take you to the specific Wallpaper source tab.
• Wallpaper effects - by accessing one of the options: Enhance, Smart Size, Background color, Calendar or by pressing the assigned key shortcut. Any option will take you to the specific Wallpaper effects tab.
• Monitors opens the Monitors tab. Quick access to this tab if you press F3 key.
• Log opens the Log tab. You can also press the F4 key for instant access to this tab.
• You can go to Settings tab by accessing one of the Program settings options: General, Start up, Playlist, Icon/Help, Updates, System or Power. Any option will take you to the specific Settings tab.

Desktop menu

From this menu you can choose to show desktop icons or not and to show the taskbar or not.

You can also tell BioniX Background Switcher to stay on top and to always be on front of other windows opened. Blank desktop will put a solid black wallpaper on your desktop.

You have quick access to this functions from this Desktop menu or you can use the assigned key shortcuts.