CompassTemplate does not allow to override the settings in the session, because a new one is created on each call to CompassTemplate.getSettings(). This is because session.getSettings is callled in a callback and the callback creates a new session on each invocation: public CompassSettings getSettings() { return (CompassSettings) execute(new CompassCallback() { public Object doInCompass(CompassSession session) throws CompassException { return session.getSettings(); // A new session each time CompassTemplate.this.getSettings() is called } }); } Fix: CompassTemplate should keep its own session settings and copy those when execute() is called.