View Controls
All view settings are accessed from the View menu in the menu bar.
Toggle View > Area Cloud Overview to switch between cloud view (aggregated areas) and full topology (all devices). See Area Cloud Overview on the Topology Canvas page for details. The toggle state persists across sessions. When auto-activated by threshold, you can manually toggle off to see the full topology.
| Mode | Shows |
|---|---|
| System Default | Uses the admin-configured display name mode (see Admin > System Settings > Display) |
| SNMP Hostname | Device hostname from SNMP sysName |
| DNS Hostname | Reverse DNS (PTR) name |
| Router ID | OSPF router ID (IPv4 address) or IS-IS system ID (XXXX.XXXX.XXXX) |
| Hostname (IP) | Hostname with router ID in parentheses |
| Area ID | OSPF area ID for the device's primary area |
| No Labels | Hides all node labels |
Three independent toggles (can be combined):
- Cost: IGP metric cost (forward/reverse if asymmetric). OSPF cost or IS-IS wide metric.
-
Interface Names: SNMP-discovered interface names (abbreviated, e.g.,
Gi0/0/1). - IP Addresses: Endpoint IPs with CIDR notation.
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| By Area | Each OSPF area or IS-IS level gets a distinct color. Builtin pack icons are recolored to match; imported packs keep original colors. Edges always colored by area. |
| By Metric Cost | Gradient from green (low cost) to red (high cost) |
| By Utilization | Heatmap based on SNMP traffic data (green 0% to yellow 50% to red 100%) |
| Uncolor | All nodes/links use default neutral styling |
Utilization coloring requires SNMP targets to be configured and polling. It auto-refreshes every 15 seconds. In time travel it is unavailable: the canvas drops the coloring entirely rather than painting live rates onto a historical topology — blank means not available at that time, not zero traffic.
Osprey supports twelve color themes. Select via View > Theme:
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Dark | Default dark theme |
| Midnight | Deep desaturated blue-grey with steel teal accent |
| Morning | Soft warm light with sunrise palette |
| Solarized | Low-contrast Solarized scientific palette |
| Gruvbox | Retro warm earth tones |
| Warm Slate | Muted warm-grey professional theme |
| Miami | Vibrant 1980s pink and teal |
| Horizon | Warm neutral light with professional blue accent |
| Alphabet | Light sky-blue blueprint |
| Daylight | Bright light theme for high-ambient environments |
| Sakura | Soft pink cherry-blossom light theme |
| High Contrast | Maximum contrast for accessibility (WCAG AAA) |
Themes use CSS custom properties with semantic design tokens. All components -- including the Cytoscape canvas and the SSH terminal -- automatically adapt.
Change device icons via View > Icons (radio per icon pack):
- Clarity (default): Project Clarity (MIT license) router icons with cutout arrows. ABRs, ASBRs, and ABR+ASBR dual-role routers each get a distinct badge icon (dot, star, star-in-dot). Transparent background — area colors fill the icon circle directly.
- Industrial: Traditional network-equipment icons loaded from SVG files. ABRs, ASBRs, and ABR+ASBR routers use dedicated icon variants.
- Imported packs: Custom icon packs imported from Visio stencil files (.vssx). Available after import via the Icon Library.
Area coloring: Builtin packs (Clarity, Industrial) recolor icons by OSPF area or IS-IS level. Imported packs preserve their original brand colors on the canvas — only edges are colored by area.
The selected icon pack, per-device-type defaults, and per-device icon overrides are all carried into Visio exports — the exported .vsdx matches the canvas appearance.
- Open View > Icons > Icon Library....
- Click "Import Stencil" in the Icon Library panel.
- Select a
.vssxVisio stencil file. The file is uploaded and each master shape is converted to SVG. - The new pack appears in the View > Icons submenu and can be selected immediately.
Vendor stencils from Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Fortinet, and others are supported. Both geometry-based shapes and EMF-embedded icons are converted.
Right-click any device on the canvas to access icon overrides:
- Change icon... — Opens the Icon Library panel. Select any icon from any pack to override this device's icon.
- Reset icon — Removes the per-device override, reverting to the pack's default icon for this device type.
Overrides are stored in your user settings and persist across sessions.
The View menu also contains toggles for UI panels:
- Grid: Show/hide the dot-grid background.
- Area Boundaries: Show/hide colored area hull overlays.
- L2 Devices: Show/hide the L2 topology overlay (only appears when L2 data is available).
- Sidebar: Show/hide the left hierarchy navigation panel.
- Activity: Show/hide the activity tray (events, alerts, logs).
The Activity Tray is a collapsible panel anchored to the bottom-left of the screen. It provides real-time visibility into topology events, alerts, and application logs. Resize it vertically by dragging its top edge.
The tray has two tabs for all users, and a third admin-only tab:
- Events: Live topology events (device/link additions, removals, state changes) and correlated incidents. Events arrive via WebSocket in real time. New events trigger a badge count and the list auto-scrolls to the latest entry.
- Alerts: Currently firing and acknowledged alerts with severity badges. Acknowledge or resolve alerts directly from this tab.
- Logs (admin only): Real-time application log viewer streaming logs from all Osprey services (engine, API, collector-manager, SNMP poller, collectors). Includes level filtering (debug/info/warn/error), service filtering, and text search. Consecutive identical log messages are collapsed with a "(message repeated N times)" counter to reduce noise. Auto-scroll can be toggled on/off.
Tip: The Logs tab replaces the need for
journalctlfor day-to-day operational debugging directly from the browser.