User Preferences

There are only a few options located in the Preferences, accessible though the menu via Edit > Preferences. Most other options, like whether to draw the grid, what kind of snapping to do or the last used settings when creating a new map are simply remembered persistently.

The preferences are stored in a system-dependent format and location:

Windows

Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\mapeditor.org\Tiled

macOS

~/Library/Preferences/org.mapeditor.Tiled.plist

Linux

~/.config/mapeditor.org/tiled.conf

General

General Preferences

Saving and Loading

Reload tileset images when they change

This is very useful while working on the tiles or when the tiles might change as a result of a source control system.

Restore previous session on startup

When disabled, Tiled always starts with an empty session. This can be useful when you frequently switch projects.

Use safe writing of files

This setting causes files to be written to a temporary file, and when all went well, to be swapped with the target file. This avoids data getting lost due to errors while saving or due to insufficient disk space. Unfortunately, it is known to cause issues when saving files to a Dropbox folder or a network drive, in which case it helps to disable this feature.

Repeat last export on save

With this feature enabled, any time you save a map or tileset that was previously exported it will automatically be exported again to the same location and format.

Since Tiled 1.2

Export Options

The following export options are applied each time a map or tileset gets exported, without affecting the map or tileset itself.

Embed tilesets

All tilesets are embedded in the exported map. Useful for example when you are exporting to JSON and loading an external tileset is not desired.

Detach templates

All template instances are detached. Useful when you want to use the templates feature but can’t or don’t want to load the external template object files.

Resolve object types and properties

Stores effective object type and properties with each object. Object properties are inherited from a tile (in case of a tile object) and from the default properties of their type.

Minimize output

Omits unnecessary whitespace in the output file. This option is supported for XML (TMX and TSX), JSON and Lua formats.

These options are also available as options when exporting using the command-line.

Interface

Interface

Language

By default the language tries to match that of the system, but if it picks the wrong one you can change it here.

Grid colour

Because black is not always the best color for the grid.

Fine grid divisions

The tile grid can be divided further using this setting, which affects the “Snap to Fine Grid” setting in the View > Snapping menu.

Object line width

Shapes are by default rendered with a 2 pixel wide line, but some people like it thinner or even thicker. On some systems the DPI-based scaling will affect this setting as well.

Since Tiled 1.5
Object selection behavior

By default the Select Objects tool selects objects from any layer. With this setting, you can make it prefer to select objects from the currently selected layers, or to only pick objects from the selected layers.

When the “Highlight Current Layer” option is enabled, Tiled automatically prefers to select objects from the currently selected layers.

Hardware accelerated drawing (OpenGL)

This enables a rather unoptimized way of rendering the map using OpenGL. It’s usually not an improvement and may lead to crashes, but in some scenarios it can make editing more responsive.

Since Tiled 1.1
Mouse wheel zooms by default

This option causes the mouse wheel to zoom without the need to hold Control (or Command on macOS). It can be a convenient way to navigate the map, but it can also interfere with panning on a touchpad.

Since Tiled 1.5
Middle mouse button uses auto-scrolling

With this option enabled, the clicking middle mouse button doesn’t drag the map directly but instead controls the speed of a continuous panning movement.

Since Tiled 1.5
Use smooth scrolling

This option affects the behavior when scrolling with the arrow keys. When disabled, the view scrolls in steps based on key press events. When enabled (the default), the view scrolls continuously while the keys are held down.

Since Tiled 1.3

Updates

By default, Tiled checks for news and new versions and highlights any updates in the status bar. Here you can disable this functionality. It is recommended to keep at least one of these enabled.

If you disable displaying of new versions, you can still manually check whether a new version is available by opening the About Tiled dialog.

Since Tiled 1.3

Keyboard

Here you can add, remove or change the keyboard shortcuts of most available actions.

Conflicting keybindings are highlighted in red. They will not work until you resolve the conflict.

If you customize multiple shortcuts, it is recommended to use the export functionality to save the keybindings somewhere, so that you can easily recover that setup or copy it to other Tiled installations.

Theme

On Windows and Linux, the default style used by Tiled is “Tiled Fusion”. This is a customized version of the “Fusion” style that ships with Qt. On macOS, this style can also be used, but because it looks so out of place the default is “Native” there.

The “Tiled Fusion” style allows customizing the base color. When choosing a dark base color, the text automatically switches to white and some other adjustments are made to keep things readable. You can also choose a custom selection color.

The “Native” style tries to fit in with the operating system, and is available since it is in some cases preferable to the custom style. The base color and selection color can’t be changed when using this style, as they depend on the system.

New in Tiled 1.10

Custom Interface Font

Normally the application font defaults to the one defined by the system. If you’d like Tiled to use a different font, you can set one here.

Plugins

Here you can choose which plugins are enabled, as well as opening the scripted extensions folder.

Plugins add support for map and/or tileset file formats. Some generic plugins are enabled by default, while more specific ones need to be manually enabled.

There is no need to restart Tiled when enabling or disabling plugins. When a plugin fails to load, try hovering its icon to see if the tool tip displays a useful error message.

See Export Formats for more information about supported file formats.