Knowledge Baseintermediate

Page settings reference

The Page Settings panel in the layout builder has four toggles that switch global help-center features on or off — breadcrumbs, search, dark mode, and the language selector.

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Page settings reference

The layout builder’s Page Settings panel controls global behavior of the public help center — features that apply to every page rather than to individual blocks. Each is a single toggle. Flip it, save, and the public site updates within seconds.

The four toggles are listed below in the order they appear in the panel.

  • Toggle label — Breadcrumbs
  • Default — On
  • Affects — Article pages, category pages

Breadcrumbs are the path strip at the top of an article page — “Help Center › Billing › Invoices › Update my payment method.” They help visitors orient themselves and click back up the tree.

Leave on if: - Your help center has more than one category, or - You use subcategories, or - Customers tend to land on articles directly from search and need to see context.

Turn off if: - The help center is intentionally minimal (one category, flat structure) and the breadcrumb feels redundant. - Your branding pass moved navigation to a custom header.

  • Toggle label — Search
  • Default — On
  • Affects — Header search bar, hero/compact search blocks

Master switch for help-center search. Off removes the search bar from the header and disables any search blocks you’ve placed in the layout. Search by URL (/knowledge/your-slug/search?q=...) also stops returning results.

Turn off if: - Your help center is small enough that browsing is faster than searching. - You’re temporarily debugging a search issue and want to keep customers from hitting a broken experience. - Search would surface drafts or staging content you don’t want public yet (rare — drafts aren’t indexed anyway, but the option is here).

Most help centers leave this on.

Dark Mode

  • Toggle label — Dark Mode
  • Default — On
  • Affects — Whole public site

When on, the public site offers a light/dark theme toggle that honors the visitor’s browser preference and lets them override. When off, the site renders in light theme only.

Turn off if: - Your branding only has a light palette and the dark theme feels off-brand. - Your screenshots and embedded media are light-mode only — a dark theme would render them awkwardly.

Leave on if you can. Visitors increasingly expect dark-mode support; the cost of leaving it on is essentially zero.

Language selector

  • Toggle label — Language selector
  • Default — On (when more than one language is enabled)
  • Affects — Header of the public site

Shows or hides the language switcher in the header. When off, the help center renders in the visitor’s chosen language but customers can’t switch languages.

The selector only appears at all if you have more than one enabled language. With a single language, the toggle has no effect.

Turn off if: - You’d rather force visitors to a specific language (e.g. you’re serving an EU-only help center in English). - The selector is too prominent for a brand-focused header design.

Leave on if you publish in multiple languages and want visitors to choose.

What this panel doesn’t control

A few help-center behaviors are configured elsewhere, not in Page Settings:

  • Role-based browsing — rolesEnabled is an API-only flag today. There’s no toggle in the layout builder for it. If you want a role-tagged help center, use the External KB API or contact support.
  • The article-page table of contents — controlled by your article body’s heading structure, not a setting.
  • Custom domain — set up in a separate flow. See Set up a custom domain.
  • Branding (logo, colors, fonts) — in the Design tab, separate from Layout. See Configure branding and theme.
  • Markets — in the Markets & Languages tab. Separate from Page Settings.

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