Overview

Settings

All of the settings file locations described in this section conform to the XDG Base Directory Specification. They are configurable using environment variables:

Scope OS Default XDG Base Variable RStudio Variable
User Windows %APPDATA%\RStudio XDG_CONFIG_HOME RSTUDIO_CONFIG_HOME
System Windows %PROGRAMDATA%\RStudio XDG_CONFIG_DIRS RSTUDIO_CONFIG_DIR
User Unix ~/.config/rstudio XDG_CONFIG_HOME RSTUDIO_CONFIG_HOME
System Unix /etc/rstudio XDG_CONFIG_DIRS RSTUDIO_CONFIG_DIR

Here, and in the rest of this section, “Unix” refers to both Linux and macOS.

In accordance with the Base Directory Specification, the XDG environment variables specify the location of the rstudio folder. For example, to store system-wide preference configuration in /var/config/rstudio/rstudio-prefs.json, you would set the XDG_CONFIG_DIRS variable to the value /var/config.

If specified, the RStudio variables take precedence over the XDG variables. These variables specify a specific directory (not a base directory). For example, to store system-wide preferences in /var/config/settings/rstudio-prefs.json, you would set the RSTUDIO_CONFIG_DIR variable to the value /var/config/settings.