Persona

The Control Panel is a window of its own, separate from the stage — the stage window is the transparent, frameless one OBS captures; the panel window paints its own title bar, is translucent, and is excluded from stage-window capture

There is no tab bar. The left column runs from the scene picker down through the layers, with Stage, Tracking, Automations and Settings pinned below them; the right column is the detail for whatever is selected. Stage is the stage window and the active scene itself — window, scene transition, background, camera, lighting and environment; Tracking holds the tracking sources; Automations holds your automations and avatar shortcuts; Settings holds the application settings that are the same whichever scene is on. Reaching any of them is the same gesture as picking a layer

Window

The first section under Stage is the stage window itself: how large it is, and what it draws besides the scene. These four are application settings rather than scene properties, so a scene switch leaves them where they are

Window Size

Sizes the stage window directly. The picker holds the common streaming canvases, the two portrait ones fitting TikTok and YouTube Shorts

Custom Size below it is a width × height pair, from 100 to 8192, applied as you leave the field. A size outside the table above shows the picker as Custom — dragging the stage window's edge yourself lands there too, and the two numbers follow

These are device-independent pixels. On a Retina or scaled display, what a capture actually gets is that multiplied by the scale factor

The stage window can be larger than the screen, so portrait presets retain their full dimensions even on a laptop display

Stream Mode

Off by default. With it on, selection handles, the drag strip's grip handle and the FPS counter stop being drawn onto the stage, so a capture shows only the scene, plus the Inspector if it is on

It gates only the editor chrome that lands on the stage. Selection itself is untouched — a selected layer stays selected and still drags, only its selection indicators are hidden. The Control Panel needs no hiding alongside it: it is a separate window and was never in the capture

The controls it overrides stay in the Control Panel, dimmed and disabled: Handle Mode, the environment's Handles row, the pointer button on each light row, and Show FPS Counter, which keeps its saved value. All but the light buttons carry a note to turn off Stream Mode first; a light row skips it, as its other settings stay editable

Inspector

Off by default. With it on, a read-only panel over a blurred backdrop sits in the stage's top-left corner, headed by the LAPLACE Persona name and version. It is drawn on the stage, so it is part of the capture — Stream Mode leaves it in place, and its switch stays editable while Stream Mode is on

It follows the active scene's primary model, whatever is selected in the Control Panel. Info heads the same rows as the model's own info section (Live2D, VRM), always shown and never collapsed. Nothing in it can be changed — it has no model picker and no tracking section

Show FPS Counter

Draws a stats widget over the stage, with one row per clock: UI is the page-side loop — gestures, tracking and placement updates — and GPU is the rate the stage actually renders at, avatars, props and the effects chain included. A row reads – while its clock has nothing to draw

Both are measured rates rather than the cap you set, so the widget is how you tell a limit being honoured from a scene that cannot keep up. Each row scrolls a 24-second history beside its number, and clicking the widget cycles what all of it shows:

The widget is drawn onto the stage, so Stream Mode takes it off along with the selection handles, which keeps a block of statistics out of your capture. This setting itself is untouched, and the widget returns when Stream Mode goes off

Background

Stage Background picks one of three modes from a dropdown. Switching between them is instant and never reloads anything

• Transparent — the default. The window renders nothing behind the stage, so your desktop shows through and OBS window capture picks up a clean alpha channel with no chroma key needed
• Color — a solid colour from the built-in picker, useful as a flat key colour or a simple backdrop
• Image — any image, scaled to cover the stage, picked from the Inventory under Images. Choosing this mode with no image yet opens the picker straight away, and the button below the dropdown names the current image and reopens it. Cancelling leaves the previous mode in place

The mode, the chosen colour and the chosen image are all remembered separately, so you can move between them without re-picking. All three belong to the scene, so different scenes can carry different backgrounds

A 3D scene can also draw an environment map behind everything instead, which lights the avatar as well as filling the frame

Window Behaviour

Persona runs two windows, each remembering its own size and position

The stage window is frameless, transparent and resizable. It has no title bar, so a 28 px drag strip runs along its top edge, and grabbing it is how you move the window. A frameless window shows no sign that it moves, so bringing the pointer onto that edge fades in a gradient and a grip handle — it is drawn on the stage and reaches the capture, so Stream Mode leaves it out, the strip still dragging but painting nothing. A pointer crossing the edge with a button held is a stage gesture and reveals nothing. An exact size needs no dragging: Window Size holds the common streaming canvases and takes numbers directly

The Control Panel paints its own title bar and the window is translucent, turning solid when it is too narrow for two columns. It opens at 760 × 720, wide enough to show both columns side by side, and will not go below 360 × 640. Closing it only hides it; the app keeps running

• The split between the two columns drags: the left column stops at 260 px and the right at 360 px. The width is remembered and survives a relaunch, and double-clicking the split restores the default 288 px
• Keep Panel on Top floats the Control Panel above the stage and every other window, so you can watch it while clicking into the stage to arrange a scene. It is off by default and toggles from Settings. It targets the panel, not the stage
• The tray icon can be hidden from Settings — see Settings and Updates

Positioning Scene Items

Each layer's position and zoom are independent of the window, and independent of each other. Select a row in Layers and:

Anything in the 3D scene also gets on-stage handles, switchable between move, rotate and scale — see Placement for the numeric fields and the full ranges

Reset Position in a layer's actions menu restores the default framing. Reset Camera in the Camera section does the same for the 3D orbit camera

Everything is saved as you go and restored on the next launch, as part of the scene

Control Surfaces

Three ways to reach the same commands:

The panel's header carries the version number, the update control and the menu. The panel menu holds the commands that act on the application rather than the scene: Onboarding… reopens the first-run walkthrough, and the group below it is the external links — Documentation and Web Console open these docs and the web console in your system browser, and Discord the community server

Closing the Control Panel does not quit the app — it only hides it, and the stage keeps rendering. Three ways back: Control Panel on the tray menu, which is why it sits first; the same item on the macOS app menu, or ⌘ + ,; and on Windows and Linux, clicking the stage and pressing Ctrl + ,. You can still reopen the panel when the tray icon is hidden

To hide editing controls in the capture, turn on Stream Mode: selection handles and the FPS counter stop being drawn onto the stage. The panel itself needs no hiding — it was never in the capture to begin with

Quitting while face or body tracking is running asks first, naming what is about to stop. The prompt guards every route out — the panel menu, the tray, ⌘Q, and on Windows the close box and Alt + F4 — so a stray click cannot end a session mid-stream. With tracking off, quitting is immediate

Nothing is toasted onto the stage. What the application has to tell you — a Plugin API client connecting, the outcome of a file dropped on the window — arrives as a silent system notification instead, and only falls back to a toast in the Control Panel when the operating system refuses one. A capture carries whatever the stage draws, and a notice can name a plugin's address