CAT manual
Settings reference
Everything under the gear tile, in the order it appears.
Menu map#
Changes apply immediately. When you leave Settings after changing something, CAT saves your settings to permanent storage.
DEVICE NAME#
Your CAT's name: shown in the home screen's top bar, on your ID card in Explore, and to everyone you message (it is your LXMF display name). The keyboard opens straight away; press SAVE. Up to 31 printable characters, with no spaces at either end. Leave it empty to go back to the default, cat-game.
Messages: Name saved, Use printable text, without spaces at either end., or Changed for now; could not save. Please retry.
NAME, further down the list, edits the same name.
NEW MESSAGE TONE#
Tick it to hear a soft three-note chime when a message arrives, at most once every 2 seconds. Off by default. New messages wake the screen either way.
TIME & TIMEZONE#
The window LOCAL DATE & TIME shows the current local time, date and time zone.
| Row | What it does |
|---|---|
| CHOOSE BY LOCATION | The region, country and city picker from first boot. |
| USE UTC | Jump straight to the confirm page for Coordinated Universal Time. |
| EDIT DATE | Set year, month and day. |
| EDIT TIME | Set hour (12-hour, with AM or PM), minutes and seconds. |
In the date and time editors, ◀ ▶ choose a field, ▲ ▼ change it (hold to repeat; rolling past the end carries into the next field), A saves and B cancels. A time skipped by a daylight-saving change is refused with Skipped by DST or outside 1970-2100.. A time that happens twice when clocks go back asks THIS TIME OCCURS TWICE and lets you pick FIRST (EARLIER) or SECOND (LATER).
The time zone only affects what you see. Messages carry universal time.
AUDIO#
One slider, VOLUME, in ten steps from silent to full. Use ◀ ▶ (hold to repeat) or tap either half. It sets the volume of the chime, Party music and the GB Emulator.
CAT starts at full volume each time it is switched on.
DISPLAY#
The status line shows whether the backlight is on, dimmed or off, and its current level.
| Row | Choices | Default |
|---|---|---|
| BRIGHTNESS | 10% to 75% in steps of 5 | 75% |
| DIM AFTER | NEVER, 15 S, 30 S, 45 S, 1 MIN, 2 MIN, 5 MIN, 10 MIN | 45 S |
| SCREEN OFF AFTER | NEVER, 30 S, 1 MIN, 2 MIN, 5 MIN, 10 MIN, 30 MIN, 60 MIN | 2 MIN |
| RESET TO DEFAULTS | Restores the three values above (no confirmation) | – |
Dimmed is half brightness. The countdown restarts with every button press, every touch and every incoming message. The press that wakes a dark screen is ignored, so a blind tap can't do anything by accident. Screen off doesn't stop CAT: radios, sensors and mail keep running.
POWER#
SLEEP and POWER DOWN (which asks Power down? first) both save everything and switch CAT off. See turning CAT off.
If saving fails, CAT stays on and shows Save failed State remains in RAM. Keep power connected.. Plug it in and try again. If the network can't shut down cleanly you see Shutdown paused.
DEVELOPER#
Diagnostics and maintenance tools. They are safe to look at; the CONTROLS actions are not.
INFO#
A set of pages. ◀ ▶ move between them (they wrap), B leaves.
| Page | Shows |
|---|---|
| CORE | Platform and device ID. |
| MEMORY | Storage and memory use. |
| AIR | Every air reading with its score out of 100, including the hidden temperature and humidity, and the overall score. |
| POWER | Battery percentage, cell voltage, charge or drain rate with a time estimate, charger phase (not charging, pre-charge, fast (CC), taper (CV), done (full)...) and whether a charger is connected. |
| TIME | Clock values. |
| COMMS | Wi-Fi, upload and crypto job states. |
| FLAGS | Explore story flags. ▲ ▼ select, A toggles. Changing these can break your story. |
| COUNTERS | Explore counters (such as health). A adds one, SELECT takes one away. |
CONTROLS#
| Row | What it does |
|---|---|
| ENTER BOOTLOADER | Saves, then restarts the game processor in USB update mode for the provisioner. Only use it when you are about to update the firmware. |
| FORCE SAVE | Saves settings, game progress and the messaging node now. There is no message on screen. |
| CLEAR GAME SAVE | Erases your Explore progress and restarts CAT. Messages and settings are kept. |
| CLEAR SETTINGS | Erases the basic settings file and restarts CAT. |
To see the firmware version, connect to the USB shell and type version.