BEAMdocs usebeam.sh →

Settings

Settings opens from the gear icon at the right end of the status bar, or by typing settings in the terminal. Escape closes it. What follows is every tab a beta account sees. A few additional tabs (AI Models, Lab, Team) appear only on accounts with specific grants during the beta — if you don't see them, your account doesn't have them yet.

Appearance

Three skins with live previews — Terminal (monospace, CLI-first, dark), Studio (deep navy, glass panels), Light (cool grey, low-glare). All features work identically in every skin. Also here:

  • Paste behavior — Smart Import (structured pastes offer to become tasks) or Plain Text. Same as paste-mode smart|plain.
  • Voice — pick the text-to-speech voice, with previews.

Account

The signed-in account: email, cloud sync state, sign-out. Cloud sync can be disabled entirely for a local-only workspace (account disable does the same).

API Keys

Bring your own provider keys (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Perplexity). BEAM ships with server-side keys on every beta account, so this is optional — reasons to add your own: your requests bill to your own accounts, and the shared-key rate limit (120 requests per hour) no longer applies to you.

Keys are stored encrypted under your vault key. If encryption isn't set up or is locked, BEAM refuses to store keys on disk — they stay in memory for the session and the UI says so.

AI Mode

Controls how the AI engages: response style and whether the AI can read your workspace data (also settings ai-context on|off).

Usage

Cumulative AI usage — tokens and estimated cost, aggregated monthly by provider and mode. The same numbers that appear per-response in the terminal usage line.

Logs

Application logs, for support conversations.

MCP

Tool-server connections the AI can use. Built-in tools are always present; external integrations (Google Drive/Docs/Calendar, GitHub) are enabled per-account during the beta — see the mcp command.

Encryption

The load-bearing tab:

  • Enable / status — whether your workspace is end-to-end encrypted (AES-256-GCM, key derived from your password on-device).
  • Change password — re-derives your keys and generates a new 24-word recovery phrase; the old phrase stops working. Save the new one.
  • Lock Now — clears keys from memory and returns to the unlock screen. Same as privacy lock.
  • Auto-lock timer — lock automatically after 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes idle. Default is Never; if you work anywhere shared, set one.
  • Recovery phrase — view it again while unlocked. If you never saved it, do it now.

Disabling encryption re-writes your data as plaintext after verifying the write succeeded — it will not strand you between states.

Extension

The BEAM browser extension for quick capture. Optional; the app works fully without it.