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.