Guides

Getting started

The first run changes nothing. Axion looks at the PC, shows you what it would do, and waits.

1. Install and open Axion. It asks for administrator rights, because changing Windows settings needs them. Sign in with Discord or Google — the account is what carries Premium between your PCs.
2. Run the health check. It is free and it only reads. It finds the things no tweak can fix: memory below its rated speed, a screen stuck at 60 Hz, a graphics card on a narrow PCIe link. Fix those first; they are usually worth more than everything else together.
3. Press Preview. Every tweak, the value on your PC now and the value Axion would set. Nothing is changed.
4. Pick a preset, or your own set. Safe has no trade-offs. Competitive adds the latency set. Laptop leaves out anything that costs heat or battery. Max includes the security trade-offs, and says what each one costs.
5. Press Boost. Axion makes a System Restore point, then applies what you picked, writing down the old value before each change and reading it back afterwards.
6. Restart if it asks. A few settings do nothing until Windows has restarted, and Axion will not pretend otherwise.

How Live Boost works

Live Boost is for the time you are actually playing. It is off until you arm it, and everything it does ends when the game does.

1. Pick your game. Axion finds what is installed through Steam, Epic, Riot, Battle.net, EA and the Xbox app, and shows each game's own cover art from your launcher's cache. Nothing is downloaded. If a game is missing, point Axion at its .exe yourself.
2. Arm it. Two settings go in straight away, because Windows reads them when a game starts: the game's priority and its power-throttling exemption. Then Axion waits. Windows tells it the moment the game starts, so waiting costs nothing.
3. Play. When the game starts, the rest happens: heavy background apps are closed, Windows Update, Search and OneDrive pause, the power plan goes to full power, notifications stop, the Windows key is blocked. Axion drops to the tray and stops drawing anything.
4. Close the game. Every change is put back in reverse order, the closed apps are started again, and you get a session report: how long you played, what was closed, how much memory came back, and every change that was undone.
5. If something goes wrong, the session journal is written before the first change. A crash or a power cut is undone at the next launch, and Axion says so.

How to undo anything

This is the part Axion is built around. Every change is written down before it is made, which is what makes undoing it exact rather than a guess.

1. Revert all. On the Optimize page. It walks every change Axion has ever made on this PC, newest first, and puts the recorded value back. It is free, always — undoing what a tool did to your PC is not something to charge for.
2. Undo one run. Axion keeps a backup file per run, so a single boost can be put back without touching the others.
3. The restore point. Axion makes one before every boost. Windows' own System Restore is the second safety net, in Settings › System › Recovery.
4. Live Boost ends itself. Nothing it does outlives the game, and a session that did not end cleanly is undone at the next launch.
5. What cannot be undone, Axion says so before it does it: removing a preinstalled app, deleting a cache, and resetting Winsock. Everything else is recorded.

The BIOS settings, per motherboard

Axion never writes to firmware. It tells you what the setting is called on your board and where to find it, and you decide. The health check shows the same guidance for the board you actually have.