Native Settings windows for respective Operating Systems

[Suzie97]

Thoughts

currently Zen has a settings pane which opens as a tab inside the browser.

imo, i would like the app to feel more native to the OS. This is very common practice on native macOS apps with the most obvious browser examples being Safari and Arc (although Arc also exposes Chrome like in browser settings, but provides a more intuitive Settings window with the essential options).

i'm not a Windows user but i've seen settings views on Windows 11, the UI looks very good and fits into the Windows 11 aesthetic.

GNOME and KDE also have native settings views.

what are your thoughts on using native platform specific Settings UI for Zen? can it even be implemented given Zen's cross platform nature?

Prior Art

macOS

most apps use a window with options on the top and their respective views below.

Safari

for more complex use cases, apps can deviate from this approach but still keep using the expected platform design language.

Nova

Screen.Shot.2025-03-20.at.10.25.32.mov

Windows

Files