Project and IDE Settings

IntelliJ IDEA project and IDE settings reference. Reference information about IntelliJ IDEA project specific and IDE global settings configuration specific for Windows, Linux and macOS operating systems.

On this page:

• Overview
• Project Preferences
• IDE Preferences
• Locations of directories

Overview

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

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

Project Preferences

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  in the Settings/Preferences dialog.

IDE Preferences

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

For IntelliJ IDEA Community edition the folder name is .IdeaICXX.

For example:

Windows

• <User home>\.IntelliJIdeaXX\config that contains user-specific settings.
• <User home>\.IntelliJIdeaXX\system that stores IntelliJ IDEA data caches.

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

Linux

• /.IntelliJIdeaXX/config that contains user-specific settings.
• ~/.IntelliJIdeaXX/system that stores IntelliJ IDEA data caches.

macOS

• ~/Library/Application Support/IntelliJIdeaXX contains the catalog with plugins.
• ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdeaXX contains the rest of the configuration settings.
• ~/Library/Caches/IntelliJIdeaXX contains data caches, logs, local history, etc. These files can be quite significant in size.
• ~/Library/Logs/IntelliJIdeaXX 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 IntelliJ IDEA installation. Prior to copying, make sure that IntelliJ IDEA 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 Preferences
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 IntelliJ IDEA 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, plugins directories can be modified in idea.properties file.

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

To create an empty idea.properties file or to copy the *.vmoptions file, choose Help | Edit Custom Properties... or Help | Edit Custom VM Options... from the main menu respectively.

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