Session settings

Configure session behavior, permissions, transcript presentation, and tool rendering from the app.

The Session settings screen controls how Happier sessions behave in the app.

Recent versions split the advanced controls into focused sub-screens so the root page stays easier to scan:

Permissions
Session handoff
Transcript
Tool Rendering

The root session settings screen keeps the most common session-wide controls in one place and links to the more detailed sections when needed.

Where to find it

Open:

Settings
Session

From there, use the dedicated entries to open:

Permissions
Session handoff
Transcript
Tool Rendering

What stays on the main Session screen

The root Session screen keeps the controls that affect how you work day to day:

Session list behavior such as density, grouping, hidden inactive sessions, and tags
Message sending behavior such as interrupt vs queue/pending strategies
Web-only input behavior such as Enter to send
Message history scope as a dropdown
Input layout preferences
Replay / resume defaults
Session handoff defaults
Terminal connect options
Attach / local-control launch defaults such as tmux and Windows remote session mode

This keeps the root screen focused on common workflow choices instead of mixing them with large advanced settings groups.

Session handoff settings

The dedicated Session handoff screen controls the defaults used when you move a session between machines.

It includes:

Transfer workspace
Workspace conflict policy
Ignored files
Direct session target mode

Workspace transfer defaults

By default, Happier keeps workspace transfer off.

You can change the default behavior to:

transfer the workspace by default
keep the target workspace unchanged by default

The handoff modal still lets you override this per handoff.

Conflict policy

The default conflict policy can be:

Create sibling copy
Replace existing path

This controls what should happen if the destination path already exists.

Ignored files

The default ignored-file mode can be:

Exclude ignored files
Include selected ignored files

If you choose Include selected ignored files, you can set comma-separated include globs such as:

dist/**
.env.local

Direct session target mode

This applies only when the source session is currently Direct.

You can choose:

Keep direct
Convert to synced

That setting becomes the default choice in the handoff modal, but you can still override it case by case.

For the full workflow, see Session handoff.

Attach and local-control settings

The root Session screen also contains the defaults that control how app-started sessions can later be continued from a terminal.

tmux integration

Enable tmux integration when you want supported sessions to start inside tmux.

Use this on machines where:

tmux is installed,
you want to start from the app first, then later run happier attach <session-id> from a shell,
you want providers such as Claude or Codex to reopen inside the same tmux-backed local host.

Windows remote session mode

For Windows machines, the Session screen also exposes a default Windows remote session mode.

The available modes are:

Hidden — keep the session in the background for remote app usage
Windows Terminal — start the session in a dedicated Windows Terminal host so you can later continue there locally
Console — start the session in a visible console host

This is the global default. You can still override it:

per machine from the machine details screen
per session from the new-session flow when the selected machine is Windows

Precedence is:

per-session choice
machine override
global Session setting

For the full workflow, see Attach to a running session.

Permissions screen

The dedicated Permissions screen separates two different concerns:

1. Default permissions

This section shows one row per enabled backend choice and lets you choose the default permission mode for new sessions.

Important details:

the list is dynamic
it comes from the resolved backend catalog
built-in backends and configured Custom ACP backends can both appear here
if a backend choice is not enabled for your account/build/settings, it should not appear

2. Apply permission changes

This is now a separate dropdown group.

It controls when a permission change should take effect for a running session:

Immediate
Next prompt

Use Immediate when you want the running session to react right away. Use Next prompt when you want the change to arm for the next turn instead of changing the current one mid-flight.

The same screen can also show related permission/session-default controls such as where prompts appear and transcript-storage defaults for backend choices when those features are available.

Full guide: Permissions

Transcript screen

The Transcript screen controls how session conversations are presented:

transcript layout
thinking display
tool chrome mode
tool grouping / collapsed preview behavior
motion / scrolling defaults
code and diff presentation

This is a presentation layer. It does not change provider behavior or tool permissions.

Some transcript-related defaults, such as transcript-storage defaults for new sessions, are still backend-aware. That means a built-in backend and a configured ACP backend can have different default behavior.

Tool Rendering screen

The Tool Rendering screen controls how tool calls appear in the transcript.

It contains:

default tool-detail behavior
per-tool overrides
separate overrides for the expanded/full view

This is useful when you want different defaults for tools like:

Bash
Read
Edit
Diff
WebSearch

For example, you might keep most tools compact in the timeline but still expand Diff or Patch more aggressively when opened.

Related guide: Tool timeline & normalization

per session, or
globally

This makes the current selection easier to understand at a glance.

Why this structure changed

The goal of the split is simple:

keep the main Session page fast to scan
move high-detail controls into dedicated screens
make advanced settings easier to reason about
preserve the same underlying logic instead of creating separate implementations

If you are looking for a setting and no longer see it inline on the root Session screen, it most likely moved into one of the dedicated sub-screens rather than being removed.