PhpStorm 2016.2 Help

Project and IDE Settings

In this topic:

Overview

There are two types of settings that define your preferred environment:

  • Project Settings, that apply to a specific project. They are marked with current_project_icon in the Settings/Preferences dialog.
  • IDE Settings, that are common for all projects and refer to the project-independent aspects.

Project Settings

Project settings are stored with each specific project as a set of xml files under the .idea folder. If you specify the default project settings, these settings will be automatically used for each newly created project.

The settings that pertain to a project, are marked with the icon current_project_icon in the Settings/Preferences dialog.

IDE Settings

IDE settings are stored in the dedicated directories under PhpStorm home directory. The PhpStorm directory name is composed of the product name and version.

For example:

Windows
  • <User home>\.PhpStormXX\config that contains user-specific settings.
  • <User home>\.PhpStormXX\system that stores PhpStorm data caches.

<User home> in WindowsXP is C:\Documents and Settings\<User name>\; in Windows Vista it is C:\Users\<User name>\

Linux
  • /.PhpStormXX/config that contains user-specific settings.
  • ~/.PhpStormXX/system that stores PhpStorm data caches.
OS X
  • ~/Library/Application Support/PhpStormXX contains the catalog with plugins.
  • ~/Library/Preferences/PhpStormXX contains the rest of the configuration settings.
  • ~/Library/Caches/PhpStormXX contains data caches, logs, local history, etc. These files can be quite significant in size.
  • ~/Library/Logs/PhpStormXX contains logs.

Locations of directories

The config directory has several subfolders that contain xml files with your personal settings. You can easily share your preferred keymaps, color schemes, etc. by copying these files into the corresponding folders on another PhpStorm installation. Prior to copying, make sure that PhpStorm is not running, because it can erase the newly transferred files before shutting down.

The following is the list of some of the subfolders under the config folder, and the settings contained therein.

Folder nameUser Settings
codestylesContains code style schemes.
colorsContains editor colors and fonts customization schemes.
filetypesContains user-defined file types.
inspectionContains code inspection profiles.
keymapsContains PhpStorm keyboard shortcuts customizations.
optionsContains various options, for example, feature usage statistics and macros.
templatesContains user-defined live templates.
toolsContains configuration files for the user-defined external tools.
shelfContains shelved changes.

Locations of the config, system, plugins directories can be modified in idea.properties file.

PhpStorm makes it possible to change *.vmoptions and idea.properties files without editing them in the PhpStorm installation folder.

To create an empty idea.properties file or to copy *.vmoptions file, choose the Help | Edit Custom Properties or Help | Edit Custom VM Options on the main menu respectively. Refer to the menu items description for details.

To learn how to change the idea.properties file, read the section File 'idea.properties'.

See Also

Last modified: 24 November 2016