Settings Panel

The right-hand session panel holds tools that configure the view, describe the experiment, run add-ons, and inspect logs. Show or hide individual sections from View → Session Panel, or use Hide/Show session panel in the Toolbar panel to hide/show the entire panel.

Session panel mode

At the top of the panel, choose Beginner mode or Expert mode.

The choice is stored in Ephyr’s global user settings and applied whenever you open the application. Expert mode reveals additional Timeline settings and Channel Management controls (see below).

Recording navigation

An independent right-panel section, enabled via View → Session Panel → Recording Navigation.

Control	Mode	Purpose
Config / Record / Source	Both	Combo boxes with + / − / ✎ buttons to add, remove (with confirmation), and rename. Switching the Source reloads the traces.
Navigation	Both	Continuous (a single concatenated view with gap markers), By segment (each physical segment, plus overlay), or By period label (a window around each period of a selected label, with Before / After).
Segment info	Both	Sample rate, channel count, number of segments, and the start and duration of the current display segment.
Current segment	Both	Selects which display segment is shown (1-based in the UI). Disabled when only one segment is available.
Set overlay	Both	Selects additional display segments to be drawn in gray behind the current segment, using the same filters and transformations. Disabled when only one segment is available.

Timeline settings

An independent right-panel section enabled with View → Session Panel → Timeline Settings.

Control	Mode	Purpose
Duration to show	Both	Length of the visible window in milliseconds, with a [h m s ms] readout like duration. Changing duration keeps the window center fixed when possible.
Start point	Expert only	Start of the visible window in milliseconds, with a [h m s ms] readout like duration. Stored as a sample index (start_point); the displayed value is floor(index * 1000 / sample_rate).
Timebar step	Expert only	Step size in milliseconds, with a [h m s ms] readout like duration. Used by the < / > buttons and by auto-scroll.
Auto-scroll frame delay	Expert only	How often the view advances while << / >> is active, in milliseconds. New sessions default to 1000 ms.
Number of points to display	Expert only	Target number of plotted points after downsampling. Lower values improve performance; higher values show more detail.

In Beginner mode the timebar step is not shown. Ephyr keeps it at half of Duration to show and updates it whenever that window changes. The frame delay stays at its stored value (1000 ms by default).

These values are stored in the session’s gui_setup and drive the data panel and navigator.

Recording description

Shown when View → Session Panel → Recording Description is enabled.

A single free-text editor stores notes for the recording/session (experiment_description in the session JSON). Use it for protocols, animal IDs, or any free-form context you want next to the labels.

Below the text field, Expert mode shows Visual attachment. It attaches an image via URL or local file, stores it in the session, shows a preview, opens a larger view on double-click, and can open an attached link externally.

Channel management

An independent right-panel section enabled with View → Session Panel → Channel Management. Use it to organize electrodes into groups, apply filters, set units, and control how groups and channels are laid out on screen.

Global controls

Control	Mode	Purpose
Add channels group	Expert only	Creates a new empty channel-group tab. Disabled in Beginner mode.
Groups layout	Expert only	Opens an N×N grid (N is the number of groups). Click a group on the board, then click the cell to move it to, and set row and column ratios. Disabled in Beginner mode.
Set units	Expert only	Opens header units management so you can change voltage units for selected channels. Disabled in Beginner mode.

Groups layout

Groups layout opens an N×N grid, where N is the number of channel groups. Click a group on the board to select it, then click the cell to move it to. Each group occupies one cell; clicking an occupied cell swaps the two groups. After a move, the selection is cleared, so the next move starts by selecting a group again. Click the selected group a second time to cancel the selection without moving it.

The spin box to the left of a row is its height ratio, and the spin box above a column is its width ratio. Occupied rows and columns in the grid grow and shrink with those ratios. Empty rows and columns stay small and are not counted.

On the signal panel, groups that share a row are drawn side by side, and width ratio splits that row between them. Unoccupied cells are filled along the row and do not leave a gap. A group that is the only one in its row stretches across the full width. For example, two groups in the top row and one group in the row below: the lower group spans the whole row. Height ratio is that row's share of the vertical space; the row uses the largest height ratio among its groups.

Reset stacks every group in the first column with ratios of 1. Nothing is applied until you press Save.

Per-group tabs

Each channel group has its own tab. Tabs can be reordered, and empty groups can be closed.

Field / action	Purpose
Name	Title of the group.
Color	Applies the color to all channels in non-auxiliary groups.
View	Shows or hides this group on the signal panel.
Clip traces	Clips drawn traces to each channel cell’s bounds.
Scale	Vertical scale for all channels in non-auxiliary groups.
Auxiliary channels	Expert only. Auxiliary groups expose per-channel scale, Y offset, and color, and do not use the same “number to show” windowing as regular groups. Disabling a channel in an aux group can reset its style to defaults.
Y offset	Expert only. Аpplies the Y-offset to all channels in non-auxiliary groups.
Channel list	Checkbox that marks the channel for moving, channel index and name (disabled channels are greyed out and marked (disabled)), free-text Info field. Auxiliary rows also show per-channel Scale / Y / Color. Rows cannot be selected: use the checkboxes.
Move checked to	Click Move to transfer the selected channels to another group.
Channels layout	Expert only. Opens the channel layout dialog for this group (order, visibility, and optional grid). See below for details.
Filters	Lists currently enabled filters as Enable. Enable next to Filter turns the selected filter on or off. Choose a filter type (Butterworth low/high/band-pass, Chebyshev band-pass, Notch) and set parameters (cutoff, order, ripple, Q, and so on). Disable all turns every filter off for the group.

Channel layout

Click Channels layout next to Move on a group to open Channels layout. The button is disabled in Beginner mode.

• Reorder channels by drag-and-drop, up/down buttons, or a manual index list such as 1,10,12,14-18,20.
• Tick the checkbox of a channel to draw it on the data panel; untick to hide it.
• The Enable: row applies a bulk choice to the enabled state: All, Odd, Even (odd/even by position in the current order, so Odd keeps the 1st, 3rd, 5th channel of the list) or None.
• Import from source restores a preferred electrode order from the original recording when metadata is available (see below).
• Open Layout settings for the electrode grid editor.
• Save applies the new order, the enabled set, and the layout table to the group. Nothing changes until you press Save.

Import from source (channel order)

Import from source rebuilds the channel list order using format-specific metadata from the original source located next to the *_ephyr, or from a file or folder that you select if automatic resolution fails. Only channels in the current group are reordered; the set of channels is unchanged.

Source type	Preferred order
NWB	Electrode coordinates (rel_x / rel_y, or x / y)
Intan RHS / RHD	Amplifier custom_order (then native_order); board ADC channels stay after amplifiers
XDAT	Port, then channel name
DAQ	Hardware channel number (HwChannel)
Neuralynx NCS	AcqEntName (synthetic Events channel last, if present)
EDF / ABF / Open Ephys	Natural sort of channel names

If a format lacks a richer key, Ephyr falls back to the acquisition order stored in the converted experiment

Layout settings

The Layout settings dialog configures a custom grid for the group:

Control	Purpose
Rows / Columns	Full size of the electrode grid.
Rows to show / Columns to show	Visible window size (use the group minimap on the data panel to pan).
Enable custom layout	Use the grid instead of a single-column classic stack.
Draw borders	Draw cell borders around channels on the plot.
Grid editor	Checked cells receive electrodes in channel order (top-left to bottom-right). The editor shows at most a 10×10 window of the full grid; use scrollbars to move across larger arrays. Select all / Unselect all apply to the whole grid. The number of checked cells must not exceed the number of channels in the group.
Import from source	Currently supported for NWB: builds the grid and occupied cells from electrode rel_x / rel_y (or x / y), enables custom layout, and updates the channel order to match the spatial filling order.

Add-ons

Shown when View → Session Panel → Add-ons is enabled.

Provides search, View and Transform checkboxes (when the add-on supports those capabilities), and a Run button for Runnable add-ons. For installation and management workflows, see Add-ons Usage; for how the three add-on types fit together, see Add-ons Workflow.

Application Logs

Shown when View → Session Panel → Application Logs is enabled.

Control	Purpose
Log list	Live, color-coded messages from the application logger (list size is capped).
Filter	Restrict by level: ALL, DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL.
Clear	Clears the on-screen list.
Open	Opens the log file on disk in the system viewer.