Turbo Mode Guide

Turbo Mode switches the current SketchUp view to lighter display settings. It does not store the view you had before, so prepare a saved scene first. This guide explains the quick setup, the exact changes, and how to recover your display. For the product overview, return to Turbo Mode.

Quick start

  1. Choose an existing saved scene whose display settings you are happy to return to.
  2. If the current view contains important settings that are not saved in another scene, create a new scene to preserve them.
  3. Apply Turbo Mode.
  4. When you are finished, activate the saved scene to restore the settings it contains.

Any suitable existing saved scene can be your recovery scene; you do not need to create a special one for Turbo Mode. Before applying Turbo Mode, confirm that the scene stores the display properties you will need to recover:

  • Style and Fog;
  • Shadow Settings;
  • hidden-object state; and
  • section-plane state.

Activating that scene is the normal way to restore its saved display settings. Turbo Mode does not retain a separate snapshot.

As with any extension that changes model state, save a copy of the working model and keep adequate project backups.

Optional !Performance setup

The largest performance gain comes from hiding model content that does not need to remain visible while you work. Setup is once per model:

  1. In the Tags tray, confirm Show new tags in scenes is checked before creating the folder.
  2. Create a tag folder named exactly !Performance — leading exclamation mark and capital P.
  3. Drag tags containing heavy components into the folder.

You can instead create the folder from Window > Ruby Console:

Sketchup.active_model.layers.add_folder('!Performance')

When applied, Turbo Mode switches off every tag folder whose trimmed name matches !Performance, at any depth in the Tags tray. It does not change member tags’ own or per-scene visibility, and it does not move objects between tags.

What Turbo Mode changes

Turbo Mode applies the options the running SketchUp version provides:

  • shaded faces without textures or transparency;
  • shadows, fog, sky, ground, and watermarks off;
  • profiles, silhouettes, back edges, depth cue, line extensions, endpoints, and jitter off;
  • structural edges on;
  • section-plane widgets, hidden geometry, and hidden objects off; and
  • every matching !Performance folder off.

Geometry, object tags, materials, and saved scenes remain untouched. Applying Turbo Mode again safely reapplies the same override; a second click is not a restore command.

Recovery

Activate the recovery scene to reapply its stored display settings. If there is no recovery scene, restore the display settings manually.

!Performance folder visibility has additional recovery paths:

  • activating a scene that stores a matching folder as visible turns it back on;
  • Edit > Undo Turbo Mode restores all matching folder visibility changed by that application, and does not undo the display changes; or
  • with no scenes, turn the folder eye back on in the Tags tray.

Turbo Mode registers no Undo step for display settings. Do not rely on Undo to recover styles, shadows, fog, hidden-object state, or section-plane state.

Messages and failures

Success is quiet in SketchUp’s status bar. The message notes manual restoration when the model has no scenes and reports when one or more !Performance folders were switched off.

If any requested change fails, Turbo Mode aborts, shows a dialog, and writes technical detail to the Ruby Console with the [WRA Turbo] prefix.

Saving, styles, and model state

Saving while Turbo Mode is displayed does not store a recovery snapshot. The file appears modified because display settings are model state.

SketchUp’s Purge Unused removes any style that no scene references. Save a recovery style into a scene before purging if you will need it later.

Compatibility and privacy

Turbo Mode is built for and tested on SketchUp 2026. Earlier versions are not yet a supported target; compatibility will follow user demand and field reports. On any running version, Turbo Mode changes only the options that version provides.

There is no telemetry, no network call, and no background observer. Turbo Mode runs only when invoked. Choosing a website link in a WRA Turbo dialog asks your browser to open that page; the extension does not fetch it.

For support or an earlier-version report, use the contact page or email feedback@wraturbo.com.