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DaVinci Resolve Interface
While the DaVinci Resolve interface may not seem very customizable at first, there are actually many ways in which you can tailor the panels found within each page to your specific needs.
Working Full Screen vs. Within a Floating Window
Depending on how you like to work, you can choose to work with DaVinci Resolve in a floating window with a title bar that can be resized, moved, minimized, and used alongside other windows. Or, you
can choose Workspace > Full Screen to put DaVinci Resolve into Full Screen mode, where the title bar disappears and DaVinci Resolve takes up the full dimensions of your computer display.
Editors may prefer to work within a window if they’re working among multiple applications.
Colorists and mixers may prefer Full Screen mode as it hides the light-colored title bar that some find distracting and provides a tiny bit more screen real estate for the rest of the application.
Panels and Panel Focus
Each page of DaVinci Resolve consists of multiple panels. Each panel contains all the controls and information necessary for a particular aspect of that page’s functionality. In the following partial screenshot of the top of the Media page, the Media Storage panel lets you browse files, the Viewer is a panel that lets you watch video, and the Audio panel lets you see the strength of audio playing back via a set of audio meters. Each of these panels has separate controls, but they all appear within the main window of the DaVinci Resolve user interface.
Three panels side by side on the Media Page, showing Media Storage, the Viewer, and the Audio panel
Each panel you use has “focus,” meaning that clicking an item or control within a particular panel makes that panel the active panel, which serves to direct keyboard shortcuts that are shared among many panels to the particular panel you’re using. If you want to see which panel is in focus, you can turn on the “Show focus indicators in the User Interface” checkbox in the UI Settings panel of the User Preferences. When on, a red line at the top of the active panel indicates that it has focus.