General Settings

Open Settings from the sidebar. Settings are grouped into sections down the left:

Section	What’s inside
General	Language, startup behavior, hotkeys, speech, and privacy — covered in this guide
Providers	AI providers — see AI Providers
Optimize	Optimize mode, including the output action (Copy to Clipboard, Auto-Type, or Paste to Previous Window) — see Optimize
Assistant	Six tabs: General (behaviour, files folder, chat history), Personas, Tool access, MCP servers, Meeting (transcription), and Agent runs (limits plus routines)
Account	Pia Cloud sign-in and encryption — see Cloud Sync
Plugins	Server-delivered plugins (available when you’re signed in to Pia Cloud)
About	Version and publisher, the AI notice, and links to the imprint, the privacy policy, these docs and the website

The General section has four tabs: Application, Hotkeys, Speech, and Privacy.

Application

Interface Language — the language Pia uses for its interface. Each option shows a flag; the app updates immediately.
Launch at Windows startup — start Pia automatically when you sign in to Windows.
Start minimized to system tray — launch hidden in the tray instead of showing a window. Handy together with launch-at-startup.
Auto-paste selected text on hotkey — when you trigger Pia on selected text, paste that text in automatically.
Check for updates automatically — on by default. Pia looks for a new version in the background, downloads it, and then offers to restart and update. Untick it to stay on the version you have.

Reset Application

At the bottom of the Application tab, Reset Application erases all app data — settings, conversations, and downloaded models — and returns Pia to its first-launch state via a Reset & Restart button.

Hotkeys

Hotkeys activate Pia from anywhere on your desktop, even when it’s in the background. There are four:

Hotkey	Purpose	Default
Optimize	Capture and optimize the selected text	`Ctrl+Alt+O`
Fast Path	Capture, optimize, and apply the result in one keystroke	—
Assistant	Open the assistant	`Ctrl+Alt+P`
Capture screen	Open the assistant and offer a display or window to attach as an image	—

To set one, click Change on its card and press the shortcut you want — Pia captures it automatically. Cards also offer Reset to default or Clear hotkey, and the two are separate buttons: the arrow puts the shipped default back, the cross leaves that action with no hotkey at all.

Speech

The Speech tab holds both speech-to-text and text-to-speech. You choose the STT engine here with the Speech-to-text engine dropdown (Parakeet or Whisper) and manage voices for read-aloud. This is covered in full in the Speech guide.

Privacy

PII Tokenization — turn on “Replace personal data with tokens before sending to AI” to strip personal details from anything Pia sends to an AI provider, and maintain a list of private keywords to redact. This applies to all AI traffic, whether or not you use Pia Cloud. See the Privacy guide.

Assistant files and memory folder

Found under Settings → Assistant → General, this controls where Pia keeps the assistant’s files and its Memory vault. The assistant is sandboxed to this folder and can’t reach files outside it.

Assistant files folder — the current location. Below it, Memory vault: …\Vault shows where your memory lives (always a Vault subfolder). By default the folder is under Documents\Pia Assistant.
Change… — pick a new location. It must be an empty or new folder inside your user profile. Pia then copies your files, verifies every one, and only then removes the old location — you’ll see a Moving assistant folder dialog progress through Copying → Verifying → Cleaning up. If anything goes wrong, your files are left where they were.
Allow the assistant to read and write files in this folder — on by default. Turn it off to withhold the assistant’s file tools so it can’t read or write files on disk. (Your memory vault still works either way.)