---
title: Shuffling
description: How Undertone picks a new picture, by hand or on a schedule, and how to leave styles and tonalities out.
url: https://mpdreamz.github.io/undertone/pictures/shuffling
---

# 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](#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](/undertone/pictures/effects#a-random-effect-on-each-shuffle), when you turn that on.

## By season


| 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.

## When

- **Shuffle** in the menu or in Settings, or `undertone shuffle` from 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](https://mpdreamz.github.io/undertone/reference/configuration):
```toml
[style]
mode = "shuffle"
never = ["bauhaus", "contour"]

[tonality]
mode = "season"       # or "shuffle", or "always" with always = "dusk"
hemisphere = "auto"
```