Customizing Your OpenShift Experience With User Preferences

In OpenShift 4.9, we introduced User Preferences. This enhancement allows individual users to set preferences across the console, providing a customizable experience.

User Preferences consists of two tabs in 4.9:

• General - Users can set their preferences for perspective, project, topology, and create/edit resource methods for the console
• Language - Users can set their language preference for the console

Let’s take a closer look at how to access preferences as well as the type of customizations provided in 4.9.

How to access user preferences in the console

To access user preferences, navigate to the user drop-down in the masthead and click on User Preferences. Any changes will be autosaved.



How to configure general console preferences

General preferences will enable users to customize defaults for Perspective, Project, Topology, and Create/Edit resource method.

Configuring a Perspective will allow users to select a default perspective for when they log in to the console. RBAC may detect a perspective for the first login, but the console will default to Last viewed until an alternative selection is made. Choices for Perspective include Last viewed, Administrator, and Developer.


Setting a Project will allow users to select a default project for when they log in to the console. The console will default to Last viewed until an alternative selection is made. Choices that appear in the Project drop-down are controlled by RBAC:


Setting a Topology preference allows users to select a default view to be applied across the console. RBAC may detect a default view for first login, but the console will default to Last viewed until an alternative selection is made. Choices for Topology are Last viewed, Graph, and List:

Setting a preferred method to Create/Edit resources will allow users to select a default to be applied across the console whenever both choices are available. The console will default to Last viewed until an alternative selection is made. Choices for Create/Edit resource methods are Last viewed, Form, and YAML:

How to configure language preferences

Language preferences were added in 4.7 and are now located under the Language tab inside User Preferences.

Note: Date format, Time format, Time zone, and Relative timestamps are considerations for additional preferences in the future.

Connect with us

Look for more user preference enhancements  in upcoming releases.

We are  always growing and evolving our improvements to OpenShift with a customer-first mindset. Be on the lookout for more enhancements in future releases. And do not  forget to sign up to participate in future research opportunities to share your OpenShift experiences.  

Let us know your thoughts. We would  love to connect with users like you. Stay up to speed with the OpenShift design team on our OpenShift Design site, and be sure to catch us on the OpenShift Twitch channel.