# jEdit 2.6 User's Guide

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## Chapter 9. Customizing jEdit

# The jEdit Settings Directory

jEdit stores all settings, macros, sessions and so on as files inside its settings directory. In most cases, editing these files is not necessary, since graphical tools and commands can do the job. However, being familiar with the structure of the settings directory still comes in handy in certain situations, for example when you want to copy jEdit settings between computers.

The location of the settings directory is system-specific; to find out what it is, look in the activity log (see Appendix A) for a message like the following:

    [message] jEdit: Settings directory is /home/slava/.jedit

If you would like jEdit to store its settings in a different directory, you can specify the -settings switch on the command line. For example, the following will instruct jEdit to store all settings in the `jedit` subdirectory of the `C:` drive:

    C:\jedit> jedit -settings=C:\jedit

The -nosettings switch will force jEdit to not look for or create a settings directory.

By default, jEdit creates the following files inside the settings directory; plugins may add more:

- `cache` - a directory where cached directory listings from remote FTP servers are stored to improve browser performance. To clear the cache, invoke the Utilities>Clear Remote Directory Cache command. See the section called The FTP Filesystem in Chapter 8 for more information about jEdit's FTP support.

- `jars` - a directory for user-installed plugins. See Chapter 10.

- `macros` - a directory for recorded macros. See the section called Macros in Chapter 4.

- `modes` - a directory for custom edit modes. Each edit mode is a file in XML format. See Chapter 5.

- `PluginManager.download` - this directory is usually empty. It only contains files while the plugin manager is downloading a plugin. See Chapter 10 for information about the plugin manager

- `sessions` - saved editor sessions. An editor session is a list of open buffers and corresponding caret positions. The session named "default" is saved when jEdit exits, and loaded when jEdit starts. See the section called Editor Sessions in Chapter 4

- `abbrevs` - a plain text file which stores all defined abbreviations. See the section called Abbreviations in Chapter 4.

- `activity.log` - a plain text file which contains the complete text of the activity log. See Appendix A for more information about the activity log.

- `history` - a plain text file which stores history lists, used by history text fields and the Edit>Paste Previous command. See the section called The Clipboard in Chapter 3 and Appendix B.

- `mode-cache` - a binary file which stores information about all available edit modes so that they can be loaded on demand. See Chapter 5

- `properties` - a plain text file where the bulk of jEdit's settings are stored

- `server` - a plain text file that only exists if the edit server is enabled and jEdit is running. The port number and authorization key is stored here. See Appendix D

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