Petit Mates settings reference

This page explains the fields in Settings… and the saved user.toml file. For installation and everyday controls, see the user guide.

Save and apply

On Mac, valid changes are saved automatically. On Windows, click OK or Apply to save. Close the settings window after saving; Petit Mates restarts to apply the changes and places the characters again.

The ranges below are the choices offered by the settings window. Defaults are the values used for a new configuration. Manually edited files may accept values outside the UI ranges. Use the settings window for everyday changes.

Display

Field	user.toml key	UI values	Default
Character size	display.sprite_size	80–300 px, in steps of 10	150
Speech font size	display.font_size	8–32 pt	14
Frame rate (AC)	display.tick_rate_ac	10, 15, 30, or 60 fps	30
Frame rate (battery)	display.tick_rate_battery	10, 15, 30, or 60 fps	15
Speech language	display.language	os, en, or ja	Follow the OS

Size applies to all characters. Frame rate switches with the power source. A lower rate reduces drawing updates but makes movement less smooth.

With os, the app chooses Japanese or English from the OS language preferences and falls back to English if neither is found. This setting also controls menu and settings labels. If a remark has text in only one language, that text is used as a fallback for the other language.

Characters

Species	Key	Startup count	Default
Bearded Dragon	characters.bearded_dragon	0–5	1
Japanese Pond Turtle	characters.pond_turtle	0–5	1
Leopard Gecko	characters.leopard_gecko	0–5	1

The settings window requires at least one character overall. Adding or removing characters through the menu does not save the counts; the next launch uses these settings again.

If all counts are manually set to 0, the app displays one Bearded Dragon. Values above 5 are limited to 5 on load. To close the app, choose Quit rather than changing the counts.

Speech

Field	Key	UI values	Default
Enable speech	speech.enabled	true or false	true
Minimum interval between speeches	speech.speech_lock_sec	5–120 seconds, in steps of 5	30.0

The minimum interval controls a shared wait between ordinary random remarks across all characters. It does not make them speak on an exact schedule. Event remarks, such as startup, landing, and hour changes, bypass this wait and may occur closer together.

To change the text or bubble duration, see speech customization.

Weather

Field	Key	Values	Default
Enable weather	weather.enabled	true or false	true
City	weather.city	City name, such as Tokyo	Unspecified

When you specify a city, the app looks it up through Open-Meteo and retrieves the weather. This requires an internet connection. Weather refreshes in the background approximately once an hour. If weather is disabled or the location cannot be resolved, no weather information is available for choosing remarks.

The city and weather items in the menu show whether the location is resolving, not found, or unavailable. If the city cannot be found, check its spelling, save, and close Settings. Weather data provides conditions for choosing remarks; it does not guarantee a weather remark every time.

When editing the file directly, you can specify both weather.latitude (−90 to 90) and weather.longitude (−180 to 180). A valid pair takes precedence over the city name. Coordinates have no fields in the normal settings window. Coordinates resolved from a city are not written back to user.toml.

user.toml location

System	Location
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/PetitMates/user.toml
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\PetitMates\user.toml

The app creates a starter file on first launch if none exists. The current Windows implementation uses the local application data folder. To locate the file, hold Option on Mac or Alt on Windows while opening the menu, then choose Open Settings File.

This example starts one Bearded Dragon with weather disabled.

[display]
sprite_size = 150
font_size = 14
language = "os"
tick_rate_ac = 30
tick_rate_battery = 15

[characters]
bearded_dragon = 1
pond_turtle = 0
leopard_gecko = 0

[speech]
enabled = true
speech_lock_sec = 30.0

[weather]
enabled = false

Restart the app manually after direct file edits. Behavior parameter hot reload does not apply to ordinary settings in user.toml. The root-level mode defaults to free when omitted. This manual covers normal desktop roaming in that mode.

Recover from a load error

If the file cannot be read or contains invalid TOML, the app displays a warning and starts with defaults. It does not automatically repair the original file.

1. Quit the app.
2. Make a backup copy of user.toml.
3. Check the keys and quotation marks you edited. If you cannot restore it, rename the file to keep it separately.
4. Launch again. If user.toml is missing, a new starter file is created.

Restore any settings you need gradually from the backup. See also troubleshooting in the user guide.