User Interface

When you start Qt Design Studio, it opens to the Welcome mode, where you can:

• Open recent projects
• Create and open projects
• Open tutorials and example projects
• Read news from the online community and Qt blogs
• Create or manage a Qt Account

You can use the mode selector to switch to the Design mode (1), where you will do most of your work and the Help (2) mode, where you can read the product documentation. The other modes are for more advanced use, and you are likely to need them less often.

Below the mode selector, you can find shortcuts to some more advanced functions, such as running the application or finding problems in the QML code by debugging or profiling it.

What's New?

For information about new features and bug fixes in each Qt Design Studio release, select Help > Change Log.

For macOS Users

Qt Design Studio uses standard names and locations for standard features, such as preferences. In this manual, the names and locations on Windows and Linux are usually used to keep the instructions short. Here are some places to check if you cannot find a function, dialog, or keyboard shortcut on macOS when following the instructions:

Customizing the Menu

By default, top-level menu items Build, Debug, and Analyze are not visible. These menu items contain options for advanced functionality.

To toggle the visibility of these menu items:

1. Go to Edit > Preferences.
2. On the Environment tab, select Qt Design Studio Configuration.
3. Clear the checkbox for the items that you want to be visible.

You need to restart Qt Design Studio to apply changes made to these settings.

Switching UI Themes

Themes enable you to change the appearance of the UI from dark to light, for example. To switch themes, select Edit > Preferences > Environment, and then select a theme in the Theme field.

Changing Languages

Qt Design Studio has several language versions. If the system language is one of the supported languages, Qt Design Studio selects it automatically. To change the language, select Edit > Preferences > Environment and select a language in the Language field. Select Restart Now to restart Qt Design Studio and have the change take effect.

High DPI Scaling

The operating systems that Qt Design Studio supports implement high dots-per-inch (DPI) scaling at varying levels. Therefore, Qt Design Studio handles high DPI scaling differently on different operating systems:

• On macOS, Qt Design Studio forces high DPI scaling, which means that it allows Qt to use the system scaling factor as the Qt Design Studio scaling factor.
• On Windows, if you do not set scaling environment variables, Qt Design Studio instructs Qt to detect the scaling factor and use it as the Qt Design Studio scaling factor.
• On Linux, Qt Design Studio leaves it to the user to enable high DPI scaling because the process varies so much on different distributions and windowing systems that it cannot be reliably done automatically.

To override the default approach and always enable high-DPI scaling, select Edit > Preferences > Environment > Enable high DPI scaling. The changes will take effect after you restart Qt Design Studio.

Navigating with Keyboard

Qt Design Studio caters not only to those users who like to use the mouse, but also to those who are more comfortable with the keyboard. A wide range of keyboard and navigation shortcuts are available to help you work faster.

Viewing Images

Qt Design Studio opens image files in the image viewer.

Use the toolbar buttons or keyboard shortcuts to:

• - Export SVG images to pixmaps or copy an image as a data URL, which enables you to include it in web pages as if it were an external resource
• - Return images to their original size
• - Zoom in and out ( )
• - Play and pause animated GIF and MNG images
• - Show and hide the image background
• - Show and hide the image outline
• - Fit images to screen

Select Set as Default to use the current settings for the background and outline modes and fitting images to screen as default values for the image viewer.

Exporting SVG Images

If you have a freely scalable icon in the SVG format, you can export it to several images of different sizes to create a set of pixmaps.