CLion 2019.3 Help

Configure Project and IDE Settings

In CLion, you can configure settings on two levels — the project level and the IDE level.

Project-level settings

The project level settings are applied to the current project only. These settings are stored together with other project files in the .idea directory.

If your project is under a version control, it is recommended that you store XML files with project-specific settings (the .idea folder inside the project folder) under version control, the exception being workspace.xml and tasks.xml, which store user-specific settings.

You can refer to JetBrains.gitignore on GitHub to see what should be ignored.

Access the project-level settings

Do one of the following:

  • Press Ctrl+Alt+S

  • From the main menu, select File | Settings for Windows and Linux, or CLion | Preferences for macOS

In the Settings/Preferences dialog, project-level settings are marked with the For current project icon For current project.

IDE-level (global) settings

The IDE level (global) settings are applied to all newly created projects. The list of the IDE-level settings contains less options, but it enables you to change the editor settings, create custom scopes, configure inspections, set VCS-specific settings, and so on.

If you want to share the IDE settings between already existing projects, you can use the Settings Repository or the Settings Sync plugin. You can also export the settings to a ZIP archive and import it later to other IDE instances. However, note that the settings import may not work correctly if you already use the Settings Repository or the Sync plugin.

Access the IDE-level settings

  • From the main menu, select File | Settings for New Projects for Windows and Linux, or File | Preferences for New Projects for macOS.

Restore the default IDE settings

To restore the CLion default settings, remove the configuration directory idea.config.path when the IDE is not running.

Syntax
%HOMEPATH%\.<product><version>\config
Example
C:\Users\JohnS\.CLion2019.3\config
Syntax
~/Library/Preferences/<product><version>
Example
~/Library/Preferences/CLion2019.3
Syntax
~/.<product><version>/config
Example
~/.CLion2019.3/config

For more information, see CLion configuration directory.

Last modified: 20 February 2020