Adjust the console for how you work

The console has ten accessibility preferences, under Settings then Accessibility.

The ten

The labels below are the ones on the controls themselves, so you can match them by eye.

What each one does

Motion on System follows your operating system’s reduced-motion setting, which is what you want almost always. Reduced forces the calm presentation regardless. Full is the one accessibility setting that overrides an operating-system preference: it animates the canvases and transitions even where the system asks for reduced motion. It exists because that is sometimes a deliberate choice, and it is deliberately the only such override.

Contrast on System follows your operating system’s contrast preference; Increased forces the increased-contrast presentation regardless.

Text size scales the root font size, so the layout reflows rather than the text simply overflowing. Your browser’s own zoom still works and the two compose.

Link underlines on Always underlines links in prose rather than only on hover. Useful if colour alone is not a reliable signal for you.

Single-key shortcuts turns off /, ? and the g chords, which matters if you use speech input or an on-screen keyboard: a stray character can fire a navigation. This is WCAG 2.1.4. Cmd-K and Ctrl-K keep working, because a modifier chord cannot be triggered by dictation. See keyboard and command palette.

Notification duration sets how long a transient message stays. Setting it to Until dismissed is the one to reach for if a toast has ever disappeared before you finished reading it: nothing then auto-dismisses. Whatever you set, a toast already pauses while the pointer is over it or it holds keyboard focus.

Status palette switches to a colour-vision-friendly palette that shifts the ok and failed hues to blue and amber rather than green and red. It is comfort, not conformance. Status in the console is already carried by shape and by a text label as well as by colour, so the default palette does not rely on colour alone. This option makes the distinction easier to see at a glance, and nothing depends on it.

Control size on Large makes every control 44 pixels, which is the WCAG 2.5.5 AAA tier. Touch viewports already get that sizing, so the setting matters on a large screen where controls would otherwise be sized for a mouse.

Focus ring on Always shows the focus indicator on every focus, including a pointer click, rather than only when the browser judges the focus to be keyboard-driven. Useful when that heuristic guesses wrong for the way you move around the console.

Auto-refresh on Paused stops the console’s own polling from silently updating the page under you, which is WCAG 2.2.2 (Pause, Stop, Hide). On is the default. It governs Overview, the Topology map, the Security centre and the Downpipes list, which refresh in place every 30 seconds. The Downpipes list refreshes every 4 seconds while a run is in flight. Pause it if content moving on its own makes a screen hard to keep track of. Each screen has a Pause auto-refresh button in its page header that reads Resume auto-refresh while paused, and Overview also has a Refresh button.

They are per-browser, and that is a real limitation

These are stored in the browser you set them in, not against your account. So they do not follow you to another machine, another browser or a private window, and clearing site data resets them to the defaults above.

If you set the console up for someone, set these in the browser they will actually use. There is no way to push them to an account or a team, and no administrator can set them on a colleague’s behalf.

Where this fits

• Keyboard and command palette covers the shortcuts the single-key setting governs.
• The accessibility statement covers this documentation site, which is a separate surface from the console with its own conformance target.

Last updated 25 September 2026.