ControlPlane Icon

Configuring ControlPlane

This section deals with the overall configuration of ControlPlane; it doesn't cover rules or actions.

ControlPlane runs from the status bar (the right-hand portion of the menu bar containing icons), and does not show in the Dock. You can access ControlPlane's preferences and other features through the ControlPlane icon.

Enabling automatic switching

The 'Enable automatic switching' option needs to checked in the General preferences for automatic switching to occur. Other functionality, such as forced switching, will still work if this option is unchecked.

Start ControlPlane at Login

Enable the 'Start ControlPlane' at login option to force ControlPlane to start when you login.

Use Growl

The "Enable Growl" option enables or disables growl notifications of context changes.

Hiding from status bar

If the 'Hide from status bar' option is checked in the General preferences, the ControlPlane icon in the status bar will disappear about 10 seconds after launching (or after enabling this option). To restore the icon to access preferences, simply relaunch ControlPlane, and the icon will be visible again for another 10 seconds.

Menu Bar Options

You can choose to show the icon, context or both the icon and text in the menu bar of your Mac. Simply choose the option that best fits your needs.

Switch Smoothing

Some evidence sources in ControlPlane can occasionally return spurious data, either due to bad hardware (such as USB), or fundamentally unreliable physical circumstances (such as WiFi). This can sometimes cause ControlPlane to momentarily switch away from the current (correct) context, and then switch back once the evidence source corrects itself.

If you check the 'Use switch smoothing' option in the General preferences, ControlPlane will delay all context switching until two consecutive rule evaluations both yield the same guess. The interval between rule evaluations defaults to five seconds, so using switch smoothing will delay legitimate context changes by this length of time.

Restore previous context when ControlPlane starts

If option is checked, ControlPlane will assume it is in the same context when it starts as it was in when it was shutdown. This will prevent ControlPlane from running any actions for that context again. Unchecking this option will force ControlPlane to start from an unknown context at start time. Unchecking this option is useful if you want to rerun your actions after a reboot, particularly useful on a Mac that isn't mobile.

Default Context

Sometimes ControlPlane doesn't have enough evidence to make a confident enough guess as to your correct context. You can specify a default context to be used in these situations.

Confidence required

After ControlPlane has combined all the matching rules, it arrives at a confidence for each possible context. The minimum confidence threshold is configurable via this slider.

See also

Setting up ControlPlane's rules
Setting up ControlPlane's actions
Advanced settings