Shuffling
A shuffle picks a new picture: a style, a tonality, and a new layout (its seed). Style and tonality are two separate choices, each made on the Picture page of Settings…:
- Shuffle: every shuffle picks a different one from those left checked. Click a style or tonality to leave it out; one always stays in.
- Always the same: click the one to keep. Shuffles still change the layout, and anything else that shuffles.
- By season (tonality only): every shuffle picks a tonality that suits the time of year, never mono, and a new season changes it on its own. See By season.
| Style | Tonality | A shuffle changes |
|---|---|---|
| Shuffle | Shuffle | the style, the tonality and the layout |
| Always | Shuffle | the tonality and the layout: the same kind of picture in new colours |
| Shuffle | Always | the style and the layout: new shapes in the same colours |
| Always | Always | only the layout |
A shuffle never lands on what is showing, so it always looks like one. Changing these keeps the layout where it can: setting the tonality to always moss recolours the picture you have rather than drawing another, and leaving out the style showing replaces just the style.
A shuffle can also add a random effect, when you turn that on.
| Months | Season | Tonalities |
|---|---|---|
| December to February | Winter | glacier, tide, aurora |
| March to May | Spring | moss, aurora, dusk |
| June to August | Summer | citrus, tide, ember |
| September to November | Autumn | ember, dusk, moss |
Those are the northern hemisphere's months; south of the equator they are the other way round (January is summer).
Undertone works out which from your Mac's region, or you can choose on the Picture page or with hemisphere in the
config file. Unchecking a tonality leaves it out of its season too; leaving out all of a season's falls back to them all.
- Shuffle in the menu or in Settings, or
undertone shufflefrom a terminal or a hotkey daemon (skhd, Raycast, a Shortcut). - Schedule in Settings: every hour, every 3 hours or every day, counted from the last shuffle, across sleep and restarts; and on login and wake.
Otherwise the picture stays the same, across restarts too: what is showing is remembered.
In the config file:
[style]
mode = "shuffle"
never = ["bauhaus", "contour"]
[tonality]
mode = "season" # or "shuffle", or "always" with always = "dusk"
hemisphere = "auto"