Settings, Sync and Privacy

Settings change how iKanban looks and behaves on a device. Your cards, files and project data sync through your own iCloud account. iKanban has no account of its own and doesn’t collect data about you.

Open Settings

On Mac: choose iKanban › Settings… or press ⌘,.
On iPad and iPhone: tap the gear (Settings) at the top of the sidebar.

Settings apply to the device you set them on.

What you can set

On Mac:

Appearance: Main Window and Board Window each follow the system or stay Light or Dark.
Color Favorites: the card colors the color picker offers. Change a color, remove one, Add Favorite or Restore Default Colors.
Board: Show our apps, Start with lists expanded, Show list headers when several lists are selected and Done cards per list (5, 15, 50 or All). Cards per row is Automatic or One per row; with Automatic you can also Prefer wide cards. Prefer shallow cards shows shorter cards.
List Titles: hide the number prefix of list names and the @contexts in titles.
Review: after how many days a list is due for the Weekly Review: 3 days, weekly, 14 days or monthly.

On iPad and iPhone:

Appearance: System, Light or Dark.
Apple Pencil: what Squeeze and Double-Tap do in sketches and journals: Switch Marker / Eraser, Switch Last Two Colors, Undo, Redo, Show Toolbar or No Action. Squeeze needs Apple Pencil Pro; double-tap needs Apple Pencil Pro or Apple Pencil (2nd generation).
Color Favorites, Board and Review, as on the Mac.
Show our apps and Language.

Some board options also sit in the inspector, on every device. Choose Board in the sidebar and select no card: the inspector’s Display section offers the list header and list title options, so you can set them on iPad and iPhone too.

How your data syncs

Cards and lists are Apple Reminders. They sync through iCloud, just like in the Reminders app.
Files live in the iKanban folder in iCloud Drive: project folders with plan.md, pinboards, sketches, journals, mindmaps, attachments and archived lists. The Documents area in the sidebar shows this folder.
Areas, projects, review dates, the Inbox and Someday/Maybe lists and your color meanings are stored in iKanban.settings.json in the same folder, some also in your private iCloud key-value storage. Every device sees the same.
Widgets read a small snapshot on the device. Apple Watch and Apple TV read theirs from your private iCloud database. See Apple Watch and Apple TV.

iCloud can take a moment to deliver changes from another device. iKanban shows them as soon as they arrive.

Privacy

No servers for your data, no account, no analytics, no tracking. Your cards and files stay in Reminders and iCloud, under Apple’s privacy terms.
The assistant runs on your device. Card suggestions, the project chat and color suggestions use the Apple Intelligence model on your device. Handwriting recognition in journals and sketches also runs locally.
Spotlight gets only titles and their context (list, column, @context, flag, project), never notes or attachments. The index stays on your device.
Private iCloud database: only devices signed in with your Apple Account can read the snapshot for Watch and TV.
Show our apps shows a short list built into the app. It contains nothing from your cards; links open only when you tap them. Turn it off in Settings.
Connecting external agents through MCP is planned for 4.1 as part of a Pro subscription whose details are still being defined; it is not part of 4.0. The built-in local assistant remains free. See Looking Ahead — Agents and MCP.