General Settings

Configure Starfish to match your workflow. Open Settings from the sidebar footer.

The General category covers voice, the AI Gateway key, updates, your account, and troubleshooting. Other areas have their own categories in the settings sidebar -- Personalization, Import from other AI, Appearance, Voice & shortcuts, Models, Workspace, Sync, Team, Automations (Developer mode), Meetings, Local Access, Browser Use, Storage, Remote and What's new.

Voice

Settings for voice typing and read-aloud:

• Speech-to-text model -- the engine behind the composer mic. Cloud models send audio to your AI provider through your own key. The optional On-device (Parakeet) engine keeps audio on your Mac and needs a one-time download.
• Microphone -- choose the input device used for voice typing.
• Read-aloud voice -- pick the speech model, its voice, and the speed used when you play an assistant reply aloud. A Preview button lets you hear it first.
• Meeting transcription -- live captions and the final transcript with speaker labels run on your Vercel AI Gateway key. No download or extra provider key is required. The Test Voice button records a short clip and confirms transcription works.

The voice assistant and Ask about this screen have their own category, Voice & shortcuts. See Voice assistant and Ask about this screen.

AI Gateway

Starfish routes LLM requests through the Vercel AI Gateway. Your AI Gateway API key powers chat, image generation, and video generation; it is collected once during onboarding.

To update your key:

1. Go to Settings → General
2. Click Replace key and paste the new key (starts with vck_… or sk_…)
3. Save

The key is stored on your Mac, encrypted with your Mac's Keychain, and is not uploaded to Starfish's servers. Get a key at vercel.com/ai-gateway.

Vercel plan

Starfish asks which Vercel plan your key belongs to: Hobby, Pro or Enterprise. Your use of AI on your own key is subject to Vercel's terms, which vary by plan.

Pick your plan and tick I confirm this is my Vercel plan and I have read what it means for my data. New users answer this in setup. If you have not answered yet, a small banner shows until you do; click Answer in Settings. To change it later, click Edit in the Vercel plan section.

Updates

Shows the installed Starfish version and lets you Check for Updates. When a version is available, Download it and then click Restart Now to install.

Open-source licenses lists the third-party software in Starfish. Click View. See also Open-source licences.

Account

Shows that your API key is stored encrypted on this device, and provides Sign out.

When you are signed in on your Mac, two more rows appear:

• Download my cloud data -- downloads a zip of everything Starfish stores online for you: one JSON file per type of synced data, plus your synced files. See Getting a copy of your data.
• Delete Starfish account -- deletes your account and everything Starfish stores for it online. Your work on this Mac stays, and you are signed out. Click Sign in and delete my account: you sign in again to confirm, and if you own a team with other people in it, hand it to a teammate in Settings → Team, or delete it, first. This cannot be undone. See Deleting your data.

Team and Sync

Settings → Team is where you create or join a team and manage who is in it. See Teams. Settings → Sync shows the account your workspaces sync with. If you are signed out, both show a Sign in button, and you come straight back to Settings afterwards.

Troubleshooting

Reset app clears cached data and relaunches Starfish. You stay signed in and keep your connected apps, chats, meetings, and agents.

Chat wallpaper

Give your chats a backdrop in Settings → Appearance → Wallpaper. It shows behind a new chat.

• Pick one of thirteen artworks.
• Click Upload your own to use your own picture (PNG, JPEG, WebP or AVIF, under 5 MB).
• Pick None for a plain background.
• Turn the gentle Line effect on or off.

Where other settings live

A few settings people expect under General now have their own categories:

• The models shown in the chat picker, and (Developer mode) the per-task model preferences Auto uses -- Settings → Models. The Data privacy switches live there too. See Models & Providers.
• Using Starfish from your phone -- Settings → Remote. See Starfish on your phone.
• Spelling & grammar (check-as-you-type, categories, dialect) -- Settings → Appearance.
• Auto-open preview for generated files -- Settings → Appearance → Designs.
• Show code changes in Developer mode -- Settings → Appearance → Developer.
• Auto-rename uploaded files -- Settings → Workspace.
• Connected services -- the Marketplace in the sidebar, or per chat from the composer. See Integrations.
• Agents and teams -- the Agents panel next to Skills, and the Teams page. See Managing Agents.
• What Starfish remembers about you -- Settings → Personalization. See Memory.