Saving and Managing Custom Presets

Save any combination of ASCII art settings as a named preset in your browser, then reload or delete them at any time without losing your work.

Custom presets let you capture any combination of settings under a name of your choice and bring them back in one click. Every preset you save is written to your browser’s localStorage, so your collection persists across page reloads without any account or server required.

Presets are stored locally in your browser. They will not transfer between devices, browsers, or private/incognito windows. If you switch browsers or devices you will need to recreate them or share settings via a URL instead.

Saving a preset

1. Configure your settings

   Adjust any controls in the sidebar — character set, cell size, color mode, post effects, and so on — until the canvas looks the way you want.

2. Type a name

   Click the Preset name text field (below the built-in preset row) and type a descriptive name for your preset.

3. Click Save

   Click the Save button next to the name field. Your preset appears immediately in the custom presets dropdown below.

Loading a preset

1. Open the custom presets dropdown

   Click the dropdown labelled “(custom…)” to see all your saved presets listed alphabetically.

2. Select the preset

   Choose the preset name you want to restore.

3. Click Load

   Click Load. All controls update to the saved values and the canvas re-renders immediately.

Deleting a preset

1. Select the preset to remove

   Open the custom presets dropdown and select the preset you want to delete.

2. Click ×

   Click the × button next to the dropdown. A confirmation dialog appears. Confirm to permanently remove the preset from storage.

Clearing your browser’s site data or localStorage will delete all saved custom presets. There is no built-in export or backup mechanism — use the share link feature to preserve important configurations.

What gets saved

Every custom preset stores the complete control state at the time you click Save. This includes:

Category	Settings saved
Character set	Character set selection, custom character string
Layout	Cell size, character aspect ratio
Color	Color mode, saturation, hue shift, background color, palette selection
Adjustments	Contrast, gamma, edge threshold, dithering, invert, edge-aware chars
Post effects	Bloom (on/off + amount), scanlines (on/off + amount), vignette (on/off + amount), chromatic aberration, film grain
Typography	Font family, font weight
Animation	Source, parameter, from/to values, frame count, FPS, direction, easing, quality, loop
Export	PNG scale, transparent background

Session auto-save

The tool automatically saves your current settings to the browser key ascii.last every time you change a control. There is a 250 ms debounce, so rapid adjustments are batched into a single write. When you reopen the tool the last-used settings are restored without any action on your part.

To clear the auto-saved session and return to the Classic preset defaults, click Reset to defaults in the sidebar. This removes the ascii.last key from localStorage and applies the Classic preset.