PyCharm 2018.2 Help

Project and IDE Settings

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 (Ctrl+Alt+S) .

  • 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 template 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 PyCharm home directory. The PyCharm directory name is composed of the product name and version.

For example:

Windows
  • <User home>\.PyCharmXX\config that contains user-specific settings.

  • <User home>\.PyCharmXX\system that stores PyCharm data caches.

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

Linux
  • /.PyCharmXX/config that contains user-specific settings.

  • ~/.PyCharmXX/system that stores PyCharm data caches.

macOS
  • ~/Library/Application Support/PyCharmXX contains the catalog with plugins.

  • ~/Library/Preferences/PyCharmXX contains the rest of the configuration settings.

  • ~/Library/Caches/PyCharmXX contains data caches, logs, local history, etc. These files can be quite significant in size.

  • ~/Library/Logs/PyCharmXX 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 PyCharm installation. Prior to copying, make sure that PyCharm 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 name

User Settings

codestyles

Contains code style schemes.

colors

Contains editor colors and fonts customization schemes.

filetypes

Contains user-defined file types.

inspection

Contains code inspection profiles.

keymaps

Contains PyCharm keyboard shortcuts customizations.

options

Contains various options, for example, feature usage statistics and macros.

templates

Contains user-defined live templates.

tools

Contains configuration files for the user-defined external tools.

shelf

Contains shelved changes.

Locations of the config, system, and plugins directories can be modified in idea.properties file. For more information, see Configuring platform properties.

Last modified: 21 November 2018

See Also