Customizing the widget
The Widget Customizer controls how your chat widget looks and behaves on your site. Open it at Dashboard → Widget.
It's a split screen: a scrollable settings column on the left, a Live Preview on the right that updates as you type. Nothing is saved until you press Save Changes, so you can try anything.
🖼️ [Image] — The Widget Customizer: settings on the left, live preview on the right.
Style
Three presets set the widget's overall personality — its shapes, borders, spacing, and bubble size:
| Preset | Feel |
|---|---|
| Minimalist | Clean, flat design. Small launcher, square-ish corners, no fills. |
| Modern | Rounded, warm feel. The default. |
| Corporate | Professional, structured. Adds a "Support Chat" sub-label to the header and a labelled launcher. |
Pick the preset first and colors second — the preset decides the shapes your colors are poured into.
Colors
Four pickers, each with a swatch, a native color input, and a hex field: Primary, Bot Bubble, User Bubble, and Background.
Above them, Suggested Palettes offers eight coordinated sets — Amber Glow (the default), Ocean Blue, Forest Green, Royal Purple, Sunset Orange, Midnight, Rose, and Slate. Clicking one applies the whole set at once, including the header and text colors that have no picker of their own. Midnight is the only dark palette.
Two things about how the pickers interact:
- The header follows Primary. There's no separate header color; set Primary and the header comes with it.
- A palette is a starting point, not a mode. Adjust any individual color afterwards and the palette simply stops being highlighted — your edit stands.
If you want the widget to disappear into your site, set Background to your page background and Primary to your brand's action color. If you want it to be noticed, do the opposite.
Branding
- Logo and Avatar — upload one each. Maximum 2 MB; accepted formats are PNG, JPEG, and WebP. Files are stored on the CDN, so they load fast anywhere. A GIF or SVG will be rejected on upload even though the file picker offers them.
- Bot Name — defaults to Promptly Assistant. Give it a real name; visitors treat "Ava" more kindly than "Assistant", and it should match whatever name you used in your system prompt.
- Show "Powered by Promptly" — on by default. Turning it off relies on the Chat module's custom branding feature, so it works on any active subscription; a workspace without that feature always shows the credit regardless of the toggle. See Modules.
🎬 [Video] — Uploading a logo and avatar, applying a palette, and watching the preview follow along.
Behavior
- Welcome Message — the first thing a visitor reads, before they've typed anything. Default: "Hi! How can I help you today?" Make it invite a question rather than announce a robot: "Ask me about sizes, delivery, or returns" outperforms "How can I help you?" because it tells people what's on offer.
- Position — Bottom Right or Bottom Left.
- Sound Notifications — plays a short chime when a reply arrives. See Sounds & accessibility.
- Quick Replies — preset suggestion buttons shown at the start of a chat. Type one, press Enter or Add; the X removes it. Blanks and duplicates are ignored. Three or four is plenty — they're a menu, not a FAQ. Order is the order you add them in.
UX Features
- Product Card Layout — Vertical (stacked, scrollable) by default, Carousel (horizontal swipe), or Grid 2-column (best for wide chat). This is a desktop preference rather than a rule: on mobile the carousel is always used, and in expanded mode a Vertical setting upgrades itself to Grid. Details in Product card layouts.
- Allow Chat Resize — on by default. Adds an expand button to the chat header so visitors can enlarge the window, which matters a lot if you show product cards.
- Escalation Button — puts a "Talk to human" button in the header. Whether pressing it reaches an actual person depends on your handoff configuration — see Escalation settings.
Saving, and what the preview won't tell you
Save Changes persists your configuration. Reset to Default discards edits you haven't saved yet — it doesn't undo a previous save, so if you want to walk back a saved change, set the values you want and save again.
The preview is a faithful rendering of style, colors, branding, and the chat itself, and you can click the expand icon or the headset icon in it to see the expanded layout and a scripted escalation. It does not reflect:
- Position — the preview always shows the launcher bottom-right.
- Sound Notifications — the preview is silent.
- Product cards — no cards appear in the preview at all. To see real cards, use Test Product Search on your catalog, or the widget itself on your site.
After saving, reload the page your widget is on to pick up the new configuration. See Embedding the widget.
The master switch is somewhere else
The customizer styles the widget; it doesn't turn it on. That switch is Dashboard → Settings → Widget enabled. With it off, no amount of styling matters — the widget won't load for anyone. See Model & behavior settings.
What isn't configurable here
Worth knowing before you go looking for it:
- The notification chime itself — it's a fixed two-tone sound; the toggle is the only control.
- The widget's own interface language — labels like the input placeholder follow the visitor's browser, and only English and Serbian string sets exist. Your bot's replies are a separate matter and follow the visitor's language automatically (Languages & cost tracking).
- The satisfaction rating prompt — after several bot replies the widget offers a five-star rating with optional free-text feedback. It isn't optional and its wording is fixed.
- The Corporate preset's launcher label ("Need help?") and the footer text.
- Fonts, corner radius, and widget dimensions — fixed per style preset.