Configuration

Uplink is configured through the in-app Settings panel. Runtime settings are persisted to config.json automatically — you rarely need to edit it by hand, but it's there if you need it.

The Settings Panel

Open Settings from the gear icon in the sidebar or chat header. The panel is organized into eight sections:

Section	What It Controls
General	Assistant name, theme, text size
Connection	Gateway URL, gateway token
Server	Watchdog, network access, restart
Voice & TTS	TTS provider selection, voice settings, STT engine, server URLs
Notifications	Push notification toggle
Privacy	Encrypt history toggle, change password, cross-device sync (push/pull)
About	Version info, credits, links to docs and GitHub
Danger Zone	Clear chat, reset all settings

General Settings

The General section lets you personalize Uplink's appearance and identity:

Assistant Name — The display name for the AI assistant
Theme — Select from 5 built-in themes (see Themes)
Text Size — Adjust the UI text size

Connection Settings

The Connection section is where you configure how Uplink connects to OpenClaw. The key settings are the Gateway URL and Gateway Token.

example

Gateway URL:   http://127.0.0.1:18789
Gateway Token: (found in your OpenClaw config.yaml)

The gateway URL is auto-detected if OpenClaw is running on the same machine. If you're running OpenClaw on a different host (or via Tailscale), update this to point to the correct address.

🔗 OpenClaw Required Uplink is built for OpenClaw. The gateway URL must point to a running OpenClaw instance — this is what provides AI model access, session persistence, streaming, and the satellite (multi-provider) system.

Voice & TTS Settings

Voice configuration is covered in detail on the Voice Chat page. The key fields here are:

TTS Providers

ElevenLabs — Cloud-based, requires API key. High-quality voice synthesis.
OpenAI TTS — Cloud-based, requires API key.
Edge TTS — Free cloud-based TTS. Requires npm install node-edge-tts.
Piper — Local, runs on CPU. Fast and lightweight.
XTTS / Local — Local, requires GPU. High-quality local voice cloning.

STT Providers

faster-whisper — Local, self-hosted. Provide the URL of your running faster-whisper server.
Groq Whisper — Cloud-based, free tier available.
OpenAI Whisper — Cloud-based, requires API key.
Browser STT — Free, built-in. Uses the browser's native Web Speech API (Chrome/Edge recommended).

ℹ User-Provided Servers Uplink does not bundle TTS/STT models. You provide your own server URLs or API keys. This keeps the install lightweight and lets you pick the exact models and hardware you want.

Privacy Settings

Uplink supports optional end-to-end encryption with AES-256. When enabled, all conversations are encrypted at rest on the server.

Encrypt History — Toggle E2E encryption on/off
Change Password — Create or change your encryption password
Cross-Device Sync — Push your encrypted data to the server or pull it to another device. Requires encryption to be enabled.

⚠ Password Recovery If you enable encryption and forget your password, your locally stored conversations cannot be recovered. Uplink uses zero-knowledge encryption — the server never sees your plaintext password.

💡 Good to know Uplink's encryption only applies to locally stored messages in your browser. If you're using OpenClaw as your AI gateway, your full conversation history is retained in the OpenClaw session. So forgetting your Uplink password means losing access to the local chat history only — your AI conversations are still available through OpenClaw. Local messages persist in your browser until you manually clear them from Settings.

Environment Variables

Some settings can also be set via environment variables before starting the server. These override the defaults but can still be changed in the Settings panel.

bash

# Set the port (default: 3456)
PORT=3456 node server.js

# Set the gateway URL
GATEWAY_URL=http://127.0.0.1:18789 node server.js

Multi-Device Sync

Uplink supports syncing conversations across devices, but it is not automatic. To sync, you must first enable encryption in Settings → Privacy, then use the Push and Pull buttons to manually upload or download your encrypted data.

To access from other devices, see Remote Access.