Help & About

Five items in the Help & About category:

Action	What It Does
Replay Welcome Tour	Plays the guided first-run tour again (see below)
Upload Debug Bundle	Collects logs and system info for support (see below)
Discord Community	Join discord.gg/RZCT2StKhr for community help and feedback
Documentation	Visit helixscreen.org/docs for guides and reference
About	Version, updates, and printer info (see below)

Welcome Tour

The first time you launch HelixScreen (after finishing the setup wizard), a short guided tour walks you through the interface. It’s an eight-step overlay that highlights one part of the screen at a time, with a Skip button to leave early, a Next button to move on (it reads Done on the last step), and a step counter so you know how far along you are.

The tour covers:

Welcome to HelixScreen — a quick hello.
Your printer at a glance — tap any home tile to open its full controls or toggle its state.
Customize your home screen — long-press any tile to enter edit mode and rearrange, resize, remove, or add widgets.
Print status — monitor prints in progress and pause, resume, or cancel the active job.
Controls — move the toolhead, home axes, level the bed, and tune temperatures and fans.
Filament — load, unload, and swap spools, and monitor your multi-filament system.
Advanced — macros, the G-code console, calibration tools, and firmware updates.
Settings — network, display, sound, printer setup, and more.

The tour runs on the Home screen; tapping a navigation button to leave Home ends it early. It also reappears automatically after a HelixScreen update introduces new tour content.

Replaying the Tour

To see it again, tap Replay Welcome Tour at the top of Settings → Help & About. HelixScreen returns to the Home screen and restarts the tour from the beginning. This row is always available, so you can revisit the tour whenever you like.

Debug Bundles

When you need help troubleshooting an issue:

Tap Upload Debug Bundle in Settings
The bundle collects your logs, system info, and configuration (no personal data)
Tap Upload to send the bundle securely
Share the resulting code with the HelixScreen team on Discord or GitHub

Debug bundles include:

System logs - recent HelixScreen log output, starting from the very beginning of startup. That matters for problems that happen while HelixScreen is still loading your settings - a settings file that could not be read, or one that had to be restored from backup. On older versions those messages happened before the log was being kept, so the bundle showed no trace of them even though you saw the message on screen
Configuration — your HelixScreen settings (sanitized, no passwords or API keys)
Printer configuration — your Klipper printer.cfg and any files it includes, so support can see how your printer is actually set up (sanitized, see below)
Installed macros — the names of your G-code macros (names only, not what they do)
System info — OS version, hardware details, display resolution
Crash data — if a crash occurred, the crash report and backtrace
Crash history — past crash submissions with their GitHub issue references (helps support identify recurring issues)
Device identifier — a double-hashed ID used only for correlating telemetry data (not personally identifiable)

Debug bundles contain technical information needed for troubleshooting. Before anything is uploaded, HelixScreen strips passwords, API keys and tokens, web-hook URLs (Discord, Slack, Telegram, Pushover, ntfy, IFTTT), usernames and passwords embedded in URLs, email addresses, and MAC addresses.

One thing worth knowing: your printer.cfg is your own file, and HelixScreen can only redact patterns it recognizes. File paths are left intact, so an include pointing at /home/yourname/… will show that name. If you keep something unusual in your printer config that you would rather not share, look at it before you send the code — and remember a share code is only as private as the people you give it to.

About

Tap the About row at the bottom of the Settings panel to open the About overlay. This sub-overlay shows system information, update management, and HelixScreen branding.

Item	Description
HelixScreen Logo & Branding	HelixScreen logo, “by Preston Brown”, copyright notice, and a scrolling contributor marquee
Printer Name	The name of your connected printer (set during setup wizard)
Current Version	Your installed HelixScreen version
Update Channel	Stable, Beta, or Dev — only visible when beta features are enabled
Check for Updates	Check for and install new versions (hidden on Android)
Klipper	Installed Klipper version (fetched from Moonraker)
Moonraker	Installed Moonraker version
OS	Operating system version
Print Hours	Total print hours tracked — tap to open the History Dashboard
Open Source Licenses	View licenses for all open source libraries used by HelixScreen

Checking for Updates

Tap Check for Updates to look for a newer release on your selected update channel. If one is available, an update dialog walks you through installing it. You’ll see the following stages:

Update Available — Shows the new version. Tap Install to begin, or Cancel to dismiss.
Downloading… — A progress bar tracks the download. You can still Cancel at this point.
Verifying… — HelixScreen checks the downloaded file before installing.
Installing… — The new version is written into place. Do not power off your printer while this is in progress.
Update installed! — Confirmation that the new version is in place.
Hang on, we’ll be right back! — HelixScreen restarts itself to run the new version.

If something goes wrong, an Update Failed screen appears with a Retry button so you can try again, or Close to dismiss.

Caution: Once installation begins, leave the printer powered on until HelixScreen restarts on its own. Interrupting an install can leave HelixScreen in an inconsistent state.

This row is hidden on Android, where updates are managed through the Play Store.

Easter Eggs

Tap the Printer Name row seven times to launch a hidden Snake game
Tap the Current Version row seven times to toggle beta features — works like Android’s “tap build number” developer mode

Enabling Beta Features

Tap the Current Version row seven times in Settings → About to toggle beta features.

When beta features are enabled:

Update Channel selector appears (Stable / Beta / Dev)
Additional items appear in the Advanced panel (Macro Browser, Timelapse, etc.)
Plugins section appears in Settings
Tap seven more times to disable

Update Channels

Channel	Description
Stable	Recommended. Tested releases only.
Beta	Preview builds with new features. May have rough edges.
Dev	Development builds. Requires a `dev_url` configured under the `update` section of your config file.

Note: Selecting the Dev channel without a dev_url set in your configuration shows a “Dev channel requires dev_url in config” message and won’t check for updates. Dev builds are intended for HelixScreen contributors — most users should stay on Stable or Beta.

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