Settings and shortcuts

This page is the reference: every setting, shortcut and menu item, where DoCatz keeps its files, how it works with the other cats, how to uninstall it, and what to do when something goes wrong.

Settings

Open Settings with Settings at the bottom of the rail, Settings… in the menu, or mod+,. It has five tabs: General, Domains, AI, Updates and About.

General → Appearance

Theme: Auto (follows macOS — System Settings → AppearanceWindows — Settings → Personalization → Colors), Light or Dark. Auto is the default. The badge Shared with Catzoid apps means every Catzoid app on this computer follows the same choice.

General → Privacy

Send crash reports is off until you turn it on — When DoCatz crashes or hits an error, send the error to Catzoid so it gets fixed. Never environment values, log lines or file paths. It also shows how many reports are waiting to be sent, and What is sent opens What the apps send. More in Crash reports.

Domains

Default domain (the ending and its resolver), HTTPS certificates (trust the shared local CA, and Serve container domains over HTTPS) and URLs without a port. Everything about them is in Domains and environments.

AI

Use AI in DoCatz, the shared Provider card and one switch per feature. Everything about it is in AI in DoCatz.

Updates

• DoCatz <version> and Last checked, with Check now — or Show the update when one is waiting.
• Check automatically (on) — 30 seconds after DoCatz opens, then every 6 hours. Nothing downloads without you.
• Channel — Stable (the default) or Beta.
• Notify me (on) — a notification when a new version is out: DoCatz <version> is available — Click to see what’s new.

When there is an update, its dialog (DoCatz <version> is available) offers Skip this version, Later or Update now. Update now downloads it with a progress bar, then offers Restart now or Install when I quit. If something goes wrong — Could not update — there is Retry and Download from the site.

Updates come from catzoid.com’s update feed for DoCatz, with the GitHub release as a fallback. Before it swaps the app, macOS checks that the update carries the same Developer ID signature.On Windows, when the feed has no Windows build yet, DoCatz simply says you are up to date. An update check sends an anonymous install ID, the version and the channel — nothing else.

About

• The logo, the slogan (If it fits, it ships.), the version and the architecture.
• Links: DoCatz website, Docs, What’s new, Report an issue, GitHub and Third-party licences.
• Check for Updates, Report a bug and Send feedback; the licence (GPL-3.0) and a line to star DoCatz on GitHub.
• Part of the Catzoid family — DevCatz, DBCatz, DialCatz and DoCatz, with MCatzP, the one MCP server for the whole family. The cards of DevCatz, DBCatz and DialCatz show the version installed on this computer, not installed, or — when catzoid.com has a newer build for this computer — both, as in 1.0.3 · 1.0.4 available.
• Details — the OS, Electron, Chromium and Node.js versions and the Data folder, with Copy to paste them into a bug report.
• Uninstall DoCatz → Uninstall… (below).

Keyboard shortcuts

On Windows every menu shortcut works with Ctrl, even though there is no menu bar.

A three-finger swipe on the trackpad goes back and forward too.The browser back and forward keys on some keyboards go back and forward too.

The menus

The menu bar and tray

DoCatz keeps an icon in the menu barsystem tray. Closing the window does not quit DoCatz: it stays there, and so does the engine. Hover the icon for DoCatz — engine running, 3 running. Its menu:

• Engine: Running (or Stopped, Starting…, Stopping…, Not set up yet, Needs attention, Not available),
• Stop Engine, Start Engine or Set Up and Start Engine,
• Running (3) — the running containers, grouped by compose project; each one has Open <its address> and Open in DoCatz,
• Open DoCatz, Settings…,
• Quit DoCatzExit DoCatz — which stops the engine too.

Report a bug or send feedback

Help → Report a Bug… or Send Feedback…☰ → Help → Report a Bug… or Send Feedback… (also in Settings → About) open a form: pick Bug, Idea or Question and write what happened. You can add up to three screenshots (PNG or JPEG, up to 2.5 MB each) with Capture this window or Attach a screenshot… — check them first for anything private — and an optional Email for a reply. Preview what is sent shows the whole report. It goes to the DoCatz team through the Catzoid site, with the version and system details added for you.

Crash reports

Crash reports are off until you agree. After the first error, DoCatz asks once — DoCatz ran into an error — Send crash reports so it gets fixed? They carry the error message and where in DoCatz it happened — never environment values, log lines or file paths. — with Don’t send and Send crash reports. You can change it later in Settings → General → Privacy.

A report carries the app, version, channel, OS and its version, the architecture, an anonymous install ID, the error message and where in DoCatz it happened. Before it goes, DoCatz masks secrets, turns your home folder into ~, and replaces URLs, IP addresses, host names and quoted strings. Offline, up to 20 reports wait and are retried every 10 minutes; the same crash is sent at most once a day per version.

Where your data lives

DoCatz keeps two folders: the engine’s folder — see Where the engine keeps its files — and its app data folder.

The data folder is shown in Settings → About → Details → Data folder. What the Catzoid apps share is in Shared by the Catzoid apps.

With DevCatz, DBCatz and DialCatz

DoCatz works on its own and needs none of its siblings. When they are on the same computer, this is what they share.

Shared settings

Catzoid/shared.json holds what every Catzoid app uses:

• the theme,
• the AI connection — provider, models, addresses (the keys sit in the KeychainWindows’ protected storage); the AI on/off switch and the feature switches stay DoCatz’s own,
• the site address the apps use for updates and reports,
• the domains — the default ending, the local certificate authority, and names without a port, with which apps use them.

DevCatz

• DevCatz’s Docker tab runs a site’s compose file on DoCatz, and Open in DoCatz there shows the site’s containers here.
• One default domain, one local CA and one port 443 forwarding serve both apps; DevCatz hands *.docatz.<ending> names on to DoCatz. See When DevCatz is installed too.
• A project’s .env in DoCatz is what DevCatz’s runs on DoCatz get too.

DialCatz

Open in DialCatz sits on an API’s own container, at the right end of its tab row, the way Open in DBCatz sits on a database. It shows only where DialCatz has routes to import:

• the project has a Laravel service (DialCatz reads its route list inside the container), an OpenAPI / Swagger file, or a framework that serves its own OpenAPI document — FastAPI and Litestar always; NestJS with @nestjs/swagger; Express, Fastify and Hono, Django, Flask, Go, Laravel and Rust with their OpenAPI packages;
• and the container is the API itself: a service with a URL, built with an API framework — not a front end (a Rust app with Leptos, Yew or Dioxus counts as one), not a plain image, and not a worker such as queue, scheduler, horizon or supervisor. A service with an OpenAPI file in its own folder counts whatever it runs, a plain image too.

A web site with a web server and a database but none of these has no routes to import, so no button.

It opens dialcatz://open?docatz=<project>&service=<service>, and DialCatz shows its Import from DoCatz for that project with this service picked — an environment DoCatz · <project> with the services’ addresses, and the routes as a collection; nothing is imported until you click. See Import a DoCatz project.

DBCatz

DoCatz hands its database containers to DBCatz the way DevCatz hands its database services: it writes dbcatz/services.json in its data folder, readable by you only, with each database container’s engine, version, address on this computer (127.0.0.1:<port>, see Databases on this computer) and the user, password and database the image was started with — POSTGRES_PASSWORD, MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD, MONGO_INITDB_ROOT_*, Redis’s --requirepass. A password never goes through a link.

A database container has Open in DBCatz at the right end of its tab row, and in its project’s Domains tab. It opens dbcatz://open?docatz=<id>, which opens that very service in DBCatz, signed in. In DBCatz the running database services appear by themselves as DoCatz services, next to DevCatz services, with a live status. services.json also names each database’s container, so DBCatz’s Open in DoCatz comes back to that container’s page (docatz://container/<container>).

When a sibling is not installed

When Open in DevCatz, Open in DialCatz or Open in DBCatz finds that app missing, the dialog <app> is not installed says what it is and offers Download page and Download & Install. Download & Install asks catzoid.com for that app’s build for this computer — the Apple silicon or Intel DMGthe Windows installer, never another platform’s file — checks its SHA-256, puts the app in Applicationsinstalls it for your account, with no administrator prompt, and opens the link there. The steps: Find the latest release, Download, Verify the checksum, Install to ApplicationsInstall, Open <app>.

When catzoid.com has no build for this computer yet, it says so — There is no <app> build for <this computer> yet — instead of installing anything. Only when the site cannot be reached, or gives an answer DoCatz cannot use, does it take the build from the app’s latest GitHub release. If something fails, Download page is still there, next to Try again.

bridge.json

Whenever the container list changes, DoCatz writes a small bridge.json in its data folder, readable by you only. It holds the engine’s state, the proxy’s ports and, per container, its short ID, name, compose project and service, image, state, ports and URL — never environment values, mounts, labels or secrets. The other cats can list DoCatz’s containers from it and link back with docatz://container/<name>.

Deep links

Any other or broken link just opens the window.

Uninstall DoCatz

Settings → About → Uninstall DoCatz → Uninstall… asks Uninstall DoCatz? — This removes DoCatz and what it keeps on this MacPC. It cannot be undone. — and lists exactly what goes:

Your project folders stay: files your containers used from this computer are never touched. What lives only inside a volume goes with the engine, so copy it out first if you need it.

The domain resolver and port forwarding go too when no other Catzoid app uses them — macOS asks for your password for thatWindows asks for permission for that.

Also remove the shared Catzoid settings removes shared.json and the AI keys too, and the local certificate authority when DoCatz made it and no other app uses it (it then leaves your trusted roots as well). It is ticked only when no other Catzoid app is installed; with DevCatz, DBCatz or DialCatz on this computer, the dialog suggests keeping them. Type DoCatz and press Uninstall DoCatz.

The by-hand route, for when DoCatz no longer opens, is in Uninstall.

Troubleshooting

The engine

Compose, files and builds

Domains

AI

Installing and updating

• “Could not reach the update feed” — check your connection and press Retry, or use Download from the site.
• “There is no <app> build for <this computer> yet” — catzoid.com has no build of that sibling for your computer yet, so Download & Install stops rather than fetch another platform’s file. Download page opens the app’s page on catzoid.com.
• Something else — Troubleshooting, then Help → Report a Bug…☰ → Help → Report a Bug… with the Engine log copied in.

Last updated 2026-11-03