PyCharm 2021.1 Help

Project and IDE Settings

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

  • Project settings, that apply to a specific project. In the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S, they are marked with the Current Project icon.

  • 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 the 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.

Syntax
%APPDATA%\JetBrains\<product><version>
Example
C:\Users\JohnS\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\PyCharm2021.1
Syntax
~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/<product><version>
Example
~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/PyCharm2021.1
Syntax
~/.config/JetBrains/<product><version>
Example
~/.config/JetBrains/PyCharm2021.1

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, and so on 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 nameUser settings
codestylesContains code style schemes.
colorsContains editor colors and fonts customization schemes.
filetypesContains user-defined file types.
inspectionContains code inspection profiles.
keymapsContains PyCharm 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, and plugins directories can be modified in idea.properties file. For more information, see Platform properties.

Last modified: 08 March 2021