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Preferences dialog

The Preferences dialog contains settings for the Construct 2 editor. It can be opened from the File menu. Settings are organised in to five tabs: General, HTML5 exporter, Backup, Misc and Colors.

General

This section contains general settings for the Construct 2 editor.

Resize handle size
Change the size of the resize handles in the Layout View. The default is Small.
Event sheet font
Change font used in the Event Sheet View. The default is Segoe UI, 9pt.
Show start page on startup
If checked, the Start Page appears when starting the Construct 2 editor. If disabled a blank screen is shown on startup instead.
Close the start page when I click on something
If checked, the Start Page will close as soon as you click on one of the links (e.g. a recent project). Otherwise, the Start Page's tab is left open.
Update checking
Choose one of: Don't for updates: Construct 2 will not access the Internet to check for new versions. This is not recommended, since new versions often contain significant improvements. Check for beta updates: Check online for new testing releases from Scirra. Check for updates: Check online for new releases from Scirra which have already been tested by people checking for beta updates.
Reset dialogs
Click this button to reset all dialogs and bars in the user interface to their default position and size. A prompt will appear to confirm this, then you must restart Construct 2 for the change to take effect. This is useful if you want to get the default UI back. Also, if for any reason dialogs appear glitchy or no longer appear when you try to open them, resetting them with this option can bring them back.

HTML5 exporter

This section contains settings for Construct 2's HTML5 exporter, as well as the local server used for previewing.

Default preview browser
Choose the Preview browser setting for new projects. This does not affect any existing projects.
Custom browser
Choose any executable file on disk to be launched for previewing when the Preview browser is set to Custom. For example, you may want to install a pre-release (beta) browser alongside the stable release, and have the option to also preview in the pre-release browser. Alternatively, Construct 2 sometimes cannot detect the traditional browsers even when they are installed, so you can manually specify a browser here.
Default export folder
Choose the default folder for exporting to in the Export Project dialog. In this path <project name> is replaced with the name of the project, or the name of the project is appended to the path if it is not present. The default is to your desktop.
HTTP server port
The port to use when previewing. By default this is 50000 . You should not change this unless you know there is something else using port 50000 on your computer. Construct 2 will also try the next 100 ports if the chosen one is in use. You must restart Construct 2 before any changes to the port take effect.
Preview on LAN address
Enter the IP address of your computer on your local area network (LAN) to enable sharing preview with any device on your LAN. Click the button to the right to see a list of possible IP addresses for your computer. To use this feature, you must also allow the HTTP server port inbound through your firewall, and Construct 2 must be running with administrator permissions. Alternatively, entering localhost only previews on your computer, and does not require administrator permission. More information on how to set up and use this feature is in the tutorial How to preview on a local network.

Autosave

This section contains settings for making autosaves.

Enable autosave
If enabled, Construct 2 will automatically save the project to a .capx.autosave file in the same folder on a regular interval (as determined by Autosave frequency). In the event of a crash, power failure, or even just accidentally closing and not saving, the project can be recovered from the last autosave by renaming the file with the .capx.autosave extension to just .capx and opening it again. This should minimise the amount of work lost. It is strongly recommended to keep backups to separate backup folders using the Backup tab in addition to this, since disasters such as fire or disk failure could still result in lost work if the entire storage media becomes unusable.
Autosave frequency
How often to make autosaves, if autosaving is enabled. Note that autosaves cannot be made in some circumstances, such as when modal dialog boxes are showing. If an autosave is due in such circumstances, the autosave will be made as soon as possible afterwards. The autosave frequency is a trade-off between possibly being irritating if made very frequently with a large project (since autosaves could take a while to complete), versus losing a lot of work if autosaves are made very infrequently and there is a crash or power failure. You can also set autosaves to happen after preview, so once the browser has loaded the preview for testing then Construct 2 will make an autosave in the background, which could be a less intrusive option.

Backup

This section contains settings to help you set up automatic backup for your work. This is essential to ensure your work is safe even in the event of catastrophes like hardware failure, theft, fire or floods. For more information, see the tutorial Keep your work safe with Construct 2's backup options.

Auto-backup
Save single-file (.capx) backups in the same folder as your project whenever pressing 'Save'. These have the file extension .capx.backupN. For example, if 3 auto-backups are enabled, myfile.capx.backup1 is the last save, myfile.capx.backup2 is two saves ago, and myfile.capx.backup3 is three saves ago. By default Construct 2 keeps one auto-backup file, allowing you to recover your project in the event software or hardware failure causes your main project to become corrupt. However, in many scenarios you can lose your auto-backups at the same time as your main project; for this reason, it is highly recommended to also set up a scheduled backup to an off-site location.
Backup folders (scheduled backup)
To ensure your work is always safe, it's vital to also back up your project to off-site locations, or at least on a different computer or hard disk. (Backing up to a Dropbox folder is specifically recommended as a free and straightforward off-site backup.) To help you do this, Construct 2 can save your project to different folders at regular intervals. You can choose up to three backup folders and the time interval that backups should be made. Files are saved as single-file (.capx) projects with some random text appended to prevent two identically named files in different folders overwriting each other's backups (e.g. myfile-abc123.capx and myfile-def456.capx). Note: backups are only made when pressing the 'Save' button. Simply opening a project that somebody has sent you will not make a backup for it unless you modify it and click 'Save'.

Misc

This section has miscellaneous settings.

Help links
Construct 2 comes with an offline manual, which you can use if your computer has no internet connection or has temporarily lost connectivity. However, the online manual's content is likely to be more up to date, so it is recommended to use the online manual where possible. Note not all help links are included in the offline manual, such as some tutorials or other online resources; these will be opened online regardless of the setting here. The options in this tab are as follows: Auto-detect - automatically open the online manual if Construct 2 detects there is an internet connection; otherwise open the offline manual. This is the recommended option since you will see the most up-to-date content in the online manual, but automatically fall back to offline content if your connection is lost. Note this option is only available on Windows Vista and newer. Always use offline manual - help links will always launch offline content, if the content is in the offline manual. Always use online manual - help links will always launch online content, regardless of whether an internet connection is present.
External image editor
Choose the path to another image editing tool to launch when selecting the Open in external editor option in the Image Editor.
Cache icons in editor
For very large projects, the icon cache may cause Windows to run out of memory. Turning off this option may allow the editor to continue to work in this case, at the cost of reduced editor performance.

Colors

This section allows you to customise the color theme used in the Event Sheet View and Layout View.

You can choose an existing theme by selecting one from the Choose theme dropdown and clicking Load selected theme. Note this loses your current settings, so you may want to save them first. The themes listed in the dropdown are "Default" plus any theme XML files in the install directory themes subfolder. To add a new entry, use the Save as new theme option.

Click Edit colors to bring up a dialog where you can change all the current colors used throughout the editor. This does not modify the selected theme - only the colors that you are using right now. After making changes, you will need to reopen any editor tabs that are currently open for all the changes to take effect.

Click Save as new theme to save the current colors chosen with Edit colors to a theme XML file. If this is placed in the install directory themes subfolder, the theme will subsequently appear in the Choose theme dropdown for easy access in future.

Construct 2 Manual 2020-06-09