The workspace

By Alexis Rios-Negron · ThermalPrint 0.12.0

ThermalPrint has one window with four areas, chosen from the sidebar on the left. This page explains the parts of the window that are the same everywhere.

The window at a glance#

The four areas#

The sidebar#

Click the small panel icon at the top of the sidebar to collapse it to icons only, or expand it again. ThermalPrint remembers your choice the next time you open it. In the Label Designer, Focus hides the sidebar and the properties panel to give the canvas the whole window.

The Home screen#

• Restore your last queue? appears above the cards only when labels were still in the queue when you last closed the app. Restore takes you to Import & Convert with those labels; Discard forgets them. The app always starts on Home.
• Create new label and Open existing labels are two large cards. The whole card is a button, with a big colored button at its bottom: Create new label opens the Label Designer with a new blank label, and Open existing labels opens the file chooser for PDFs and images.
• Templates are shown as a grid of large tiles, each with an icon and a name. Click a tile to start from that layout. The ready-made layouts are: Blank custom, Shipping 4 × 6, Return address, Product barcode, Inventory, QR code, Asset tracking, Shelf, Price tag, Name label, and Fragile. Hover a tile to read what it is for. Example text and codes in a template are placeholders; replace them before printing.
• The printer chip at the top right shows the selected printer with a green dot, or No printer selected in grey. Hover it for a hint about the printer, and click it to open Print Center.
• Get ready to print is a short checklist for new users: choose your printer, choose the label size that is loaded, and optionally set up a watch folder. It appears until a printer and media are chosen. Press Open Import & Convert to go to the settings, or Hide this to close it for good.
• Recent documents lists files you opened before (up to eight) as rows with the file name and its folder. Click anywhere on a row to open it again. Until you have opened something, a short note says there are no recent documents yet.

The Home page keeps its content in a centered column, so it stays easy to read in a very wide window, and every card, tile, and row has a hover highlight that also shows when you move to it with the keyboard.

The main menu#

Open it with the ☰ button at the top of the sidebar, beside the app name. When the sidebar is hidden it sits at the top left.

Light and dark mode#

ThermalPrint follows your desktop: it is light when your system uses a light style and dark when it uses a dark one, and it changes as soon as you switch. There is no setting for it inside the app; change the style in your system settings (on GNOME, Settings → Appearance).

Language#

ThermalPrint is available in English, Spanish, German, and French. It uses your computer's language automatically: if your system language is one of these, the interface appears in it; otherwise it appears in English. There is no language setting inside the app. To change the language, change your system language and restart ThermalPrint.

Opening files by drag and drop#

Drop files onto the window from your file manager at any time:

• PDFs and images: they join the print queue in Import & Convert. You can drop several at once.
• One .thermalprint file: it opens in the Label Designer. If your current design has unsaved changes, you are asked to Save, Discard, or Cancel first.

For a folder that fills up with new labels, see Folder watching and history.

Keyboard shortcuts#

Keyboard users can reach every button with Tab; each button has an accessible name for screen readers.