CLion
 
2021.2
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  1. Configure projects
  2. Open, reopen, and close projects

Open, reopen, and close projects

Last modified: 26 August 2021

In CLion, you can open several projects simultaneously in different windows. By default, each time you open a project while another one is opened, CLion prompts you to choose whether to open the project in the same window or in a new window. If necessary, you can change this behavior using controls on the System Settings page.

Go to Settings/Preferences | Appearance & Behavior | System Settings and choose one of the following options in the Project Opening section:

  • Open project in a new window to open a new CLion window each time a new project is opened.

  • Open project in the same window to stay in the same CLion window.

  • Confirm window to open project in to keep the default behavior and display a dialog to choose how to open each new project.

Opening projects

Open a project

  1. Click Open on the Welcome screen or select File | Open from the main menu.

  2. In the Select Path dialog, select the directory that contains the project to open.

    • In the case of a CMake project, the directory should contain CMakeLists.txt.

    • For a compilation database project, it should contain compile_commands.json.

    • For a gradle project, you need to point CLion to the build.gradle file and then choose Open as Project.

  3. Specify whether you want to open the project in a new window, or close the current project and reuse the existing window.

For CMake projects, CLion comes with a CMake Profile Wizard to help you configure Toolchains and CMake Profiles for the first time:

CMake Profile Wizard

Open a project from the command line

Reopening recent projects

CLion keeps the history of your recent projects. When CLion starts, the last project (or projects if there were several projects opened at once in your previous session) reopens by default. You can change this behavior in the Startup/Shutdown section of the Settings/Preferences | Appearance & Behavior | System Settings dialog.

Reopen a recent project

  • Call File | Open Recent from the main menu and select the desired project from the list.

  • Invoke the Run Anything dialog by pressing Ctrl twice (or search for Run anything in Help | Find Action Ctrl+Shift+A). In the Run Anything dialog, type Open to see the list of recent projects:

    open recent project from Run Anything

  • On the Welcome screen, click Projects in the left-hand pane and then select the project of interest in the right-hand pane where the list of your recent projects is shown. Start typing in the Search projects field to filter the list of recent projects.

Remove a project from the list of recent projects

  • From the main menu, select File | Open Recent and click Manage Projects at the very bottom of the recent projects list. From the list of recent projects, select the project to remove and then click the closing icon for the project to remove.

    The selected project will be removed from the list of the recent project in the Project window and on the Welcome screen.

  • To remove a project only from the list on the Welcome Screen, right-click the target project and select Remove Selected from Welcome Screen.

Close projects

If you need to close only one project, you can either close the project window or select File | Close Project from the main menu.

If you work with multiple projects, use the following actions to close many projects at once:

Close all projects

  • From the main menu, select File | Close All Projects.

    This action closes all projects that are currently opened in CLion.

Close all but the current project

  • From the main menu, select File | Close Other Projects.

    This action closes all opened projects except the current one.

See also

Reference

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