Configuring Directories¶

There are three different directories Blender may use, their exact locations are operating system dependent.

LOCAL: Location of configuration and runtime data (for self-contained bundle)
USER: Location of configuration files (normally in the user’s home directory).
SYSTEM: Location of runtime data for system wide installation (may be read-only).

For system installations both SYSTEM and USER directories are needed.

For locally extracted Blender distributions, the user configuration and data runtime data are kept in the same sub-directory, allowing multiple Blender versions to run without conflict, ignoring the USER and SYSTEM files.

Note

You may need to have the “show hidden files” option checked in your file browser settings.

Platform Dependant Paths¶

Here are the default locations for each system:

Linux¶

LOCAL

./2.79-branch/

USER

$HOME/.config/blender/2.79-branch/

SYSTEM

/usr/share/blender/2.79-branch/

Note

The path ./2.79-branch/ is relative to the Blender Executable & used for self-contained bundles distributed by official blender.org builds.

Note

The USER path will use $XDG_CONFIG_HOME if its set:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/blender/2.79-branch/

macOS¶

LOCAL

./2.79-branch/

USER

/Users/$USER/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.79-branch/

SYSTEM

/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.79-branch/

Note

macOS stores the Blender binary in ./blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender, so the local path to data & config is:

./blender.app/Contents/MacOS/2.79-branch/

MS-Windows¶

LOCAL

.\2.79-branch\.

USER

C:\Documents and Settings\$USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79-branch\

SYSTEM

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79-branch\

Path Layout¶

This is the path layout which is used within the directories described above.

Where ./config/startup.blend could be ~/.blender/2.79-branch/config/startup.blend for example.

./autosave/ ...

Autosave blend-file location. (Windows only, temp directory used for other systems).

Search order: LOCAL, USER.

./config/ ...

Defaults & session info.

Search order: LOCAL, USER.

./config/startup.blend

Default file to load on startup.

./config/userpref.blend

Default preferences to load on startup.

./config/bookmarks.txt

File Browser bookmarks.

./config/recent-files.txt

Recent file menu list.

./datafiles/ ...

Runtime files.

Search order: LOCAL, USER, SYSTEM.

./datafiles/locale/{language}/

Static precompiled language files for UI translation.

./datafiles/icons/*.png

Icon themes for Blender’s user interface. (Not currently selectable in the theme preferences).

./datafiles/brushicons/*.png

Images for each brush.

./scripts/ ...

Python scripts for the user interface and tools.

Search order: LOCAL, USER, SYSTEM.

./scripts/addons/*.py

Python add-ons which may be enabled in the User Preferences include import/export format support, render engine integration and many handy utilities.

./scripts/addons/modules/*.py

Modules for add-ons to use (added to Python’s sys.path).

./scripts/addons_contrib/*.py

Another add-ons directory which is used for community maintained add-ons (must be manually created).

./scripts/addons_contrib/modules/*.py

Modules for addons_contrib to use (added to Python’s sys.path).

./scripts/modules/*.py

Python modules containing our core API and utility functions for other scripts to import (added to Python’s sys.path).

./scripts/startup/*.py

Scripts which are automatically imported on startup.

./scripts/presets/{preset}/*.py

Presets used for storing user defined settings for cloth, render formats etc.

./scripts/templates_py/*.py

Example scripts which can be accessed from Text Editor ‣ Templates ‣ Python.

./scripts/templates_osl/*.py

Example OSL shaders which can be accessed from Text Editor ‣ Templates ‣ Open Shading Language.

./python/ ...

Bundled Python distribution, only necessary when the system Python installation is absent or incompatible.

Search order: LOCAL, SYSTEM.

Temporary Directory¶

The temporary directory is used to store various files at runtime (including render layers, physics cache, copy-paste buffer and crash logs).

The temporary directory is selected based on the following priority:

User Preference (see File Paths).
Environment variables (TEMP on MS-Windows, TMP & TMP_DIR on other platforms).
The /tmp/ directory.