Settings Finder

Somewhere in the Z6III is a setting that turns both screens a dim, warm red, so that your eyes stay adjusted to the dark while you photograph stars. Nikon calls it Warm display colors and files it among the Custom Settings, in group d, at position 12. Knowing that, you can reach it in a few seconds. Not knowing it, you can page through seven menus and 250 items without spotting it, because nothing in the group's name, Shooting/display, suggests red light.

This page puts all 250 items in one list you can search. Type d12 into the box at the foot of the page and one item remains. Type warm and two remain: Warm display colors, and the setup menu's Auto temperature cutout, whose description mentions the body getting warmer. Each item tells you where it lives, what it does, what it is set to when the camera is new, every value it can take, and where to read more.

01.Reading an Item

Every item in the list has the same parts in the same order. Here is the path of Warm display colors, drawn the way the rest of this guide draws one:

The path is the route from the MENU button to the item, one step for each screen you pass through. The first step names the menu, which you choose from the column of tabs down the left side of the menu screen. For a Custom Setting, the second step is the group, a letter followed by a name, and the last step is the item with its code. Menus and Controls explains the tabs and how to move between them.

The code, shown as a small badge, appears only on Custom Settings. Nikon numbers them by group letter and position, so d12 is the twelfth item in group d. Those numbers are not fixed. Firmware 1.10 and firmware 2.00 each inserted new items and pushed later ones down, so a code quoted in a tutorial from before August 2025 can point at a different item on an updated camera. Every code on this page is the 2.00 code.

The description says in one sentence what the item does. It was written for this guide and is not Nikon's wording.

The default is the value the item has when the camera leaves the factory, which is what Nikon's manual means by a default setting (p. 36), and the value it returns to when you reset it. An item with several settings lists a default for each: Warm display colors ships with Warm display color options at Off and Warm color display brightness at 0. A dash in place of a default marks an item that does something when you select it instead of holding a value. Format memory card, for example, asks which card to erase and then erases it, so there is nothing for it to default to.

Under Every option, folded shut until you open it, is the full list of choices. Where Nikon offers a range of numbers instead of named choices, the range appears as one entry, such as 120 to 255 for the highlight threshold of the zebra pattern.

A green Firmware 2.00 badge marks the nine items that firmware 2.00 added to the camera. Items that 2.00 changed without adding carry no badge. AF/MF subject detection options, for instance, existed before 2.00 and gained its Birds setting in that update. Firmware and Updating lists those changes.

The line beginning Explained in names the chapter of this guide that covers the item and links to it. Most of those chapters are still being written, and for those the line names the part of the guide the chapter will belong to. The last entry on each item is the page of Nikon's Reference Guide, edition 09, that documents it. The printed page number and the page number in the PDF are the same, so you can type it straight into your PDF reader.

02.Searching and Filtering

The box searches each item's name, path, description, code and defaults. An item stays in the list only if every word you type appears somewhere in it, so each extra word narrows the list. Capital letters, extra spaces and the different kinds of dash make no difference, which is why af c priority finds AF-C priority selection.

Two habits make the search more useful. Search for what a setting is called, not for a value it can take, because the option lists are not searched, only the defaults. And when you are unsure of Nikon's wording, type part of a word: bird finds the subject detection options in both the photo shooting menu and the video recording menu, because their descriptions mention birds.

The row of buttons above the list shows one menu at a time, and each button carries the number of items in its menu. Beneath the box, a line always says how many items are showing, such as 2 of 250.

The list works without the search. Every item is already on the page in menu order before any script runs, so with JavaScript turned off, or on a slow connection, your browser's own find command reaches all 250.

03.How the List Was Made

Nikon's Reference Guide opens each menu's chapter with a table headed Menu Items and Defaults, which names every item in that menu and its default. There are seven such tables, from page 446 for the photo shooting menu to page 903 for My Menu, and this list starts from them. Each item's path, options and page come from the item's own entry in the Reference Guide, and a script compares every default here with those tables.

If an item here does not match your camera, read your camera's firmware version before anything else. A camera still on 1.11 or earlier lacks the nine newer items and numbers some Custom Settings differently, and Firmware and Updating shows how to check the version and bring it up to date.

04.The Finder