Reference

Settings and preferences

Phoenix remembers the choices you make as you work, and you change most settings where you use them. A few general ones are in the Preferences dialog, and almost every key can be changed in Keyboard Shortcuts.

Preferences

Choose Edit › Preferences (Ctrl+U). The General group has the first four settings, the Drawing group the next three, and AI Assistants the last. Changes apply when you click OK.

Undo levels

How many steps Edit › Undo can go back, 200 unless you change it. The oldest steps are let go as new ones come; No limit keeps them all, at the cost of memory.

Auto-recovery

How often a recovery copy of unsaved work is written, or Off. The same setting as File › Auto-Save.

At startup

Show the start screen. Turn it off and Phoenix reopens your most recent file instead. Reopen documents from last time, on unless you turn it off, opens the saved documents that were open when you quit, each in its tab; the start screen then shows only when there were none.

Highlight

Layer color outlines a selection in its layer's color; One color outlines every selection in the color you pick with the button beside it.

Click accuracy

How near a click must be to a line or a point to pick it: Strict, Normal or Tolerant.

Connect lines

How near the ends of a Straighten pencil line must be to be joined into a closed shape: Must be close, Normal or Can be distant.

Pen

Show pen preview draws the next segment to the cursor before you click; Show solid points draws the pen's anchors filled.

AI Assistants

Let AI assistants connect (MCP) lets an assistant on this computer work in the Phoenix you have open, on the Port given. Off by default. See AI assistants.

Keyboard shortcuts

Choose Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K) to see every menu command and tool with its key. Type in the search box to find a command by name or by key. Select a command, click in the Shortcut box and press the keys; a key another command had is taken from it, and the dialog says which. Keys given to two commands show in red, and keys you have changed in bold. Clear takes the key off the selected command, Default gives it its own key back, and Reset All gives every command its own.

Save your keys as a named set with Save As, switch between sets from the Set list, and remove a set of your own with Delete. Export and Import pass a set to another machine as a JSON file.

The Set list starts with two built-in sets. Phoenix Defaults gives every command its own key. Animate Standard uses the keys most animators who work with FLA files already know, for the commands Phoenix has. Phoenix's own keys are the same for every command both have, so the set mostly takes away the keys of commands only Phoenix has. A key the set gives one command is taken from any command that had it.

Import also reads shortcut sets exported from other animation software, as XML or as a text list of commands and keys. Each command is matched to Phoenix's by its menu and name, or by the other name it is known by where Phoenix names it differently. Keys written for macOS (Cmd, Option) become Ctrl and Alt. Phoenix then says how many were matched and lists the commands it does not have.

From the command line, Phoenix shortcuts lists every command with its key, and Phoenix shortcuts --defaults lists Phoenix's own.

What Phoenix remembers

Settings saved in the document

Some settings belong to a document rather than to Phoenix, so they travel with the file: the stage size, frame rate and color, ruler guides, Snap to Guides, Snap to Objects, and the swatches.

Where settings are stored

On Windows, Phoenix keeps its settings in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Phoenix\Phoenix. On macOS, they are in Phoenix's preferences file in ~/Library/Preferences. Themes you save are .phxtheme files in a themes folder in Phoenix's application data folder, templates you save are in a Templates folder beside it, and auto-save recovery copies are kept in Phoenix's local application data folder. Removing these resets Phoenix to its first-run state.

To keep the settings somewhere else, for tests, demonstrations or a shared machine, set the PHOENIX_SETTINGS_DIR environment variable to a folder before starting Phoenix. Phoenix then keeps its settings in INI files in that folder instead.