Settings & preferences

Open the Preferences dialog from PackFile → Settings (or via its shortcut, Ctrl+,).

Settings are stored on the server side and cached client-side, so they’re consistent across rpfm_ui runs and across multiple UIs talking to the same rpfm_server. Most changes take effect immediately; a few (notably language and other UI-layout settings) require a restart.

The dialog is a single scrollable form with a left-hand navigation pane that jumps to one of seven sections. The list below is a tour, not an exhaustive reference — for the full list of setting keys see the rpfm_ipc::settings_keys API docs.

Paths

The first section you’ll touch as a new user. Holds two groups:

• Game paths — for each supported game, a collapsible “spoiler” with the game install path and (where applicable) the Assembly Kit install path.
• Extra paths — MyMod base path (root folder for MyMod projects) and Secondary path (extra mods folder in addition to the game’s data/).

General

• Language — RPFM’s UI language. Requires a restart.
• Default game — which Total War game RPFM starts on.
• Update channel — Stable or Beta.
• Autosave amount and Autosave interval (in minutes).
• Check for X on start toggles for program, schema, lua-autogen and old-AK updates.
• Allow editing of CA Packfiles, Disable file previews, Start maximized.
• Pack-tree behaviour toggles: expand on add, include base folder on add-from-folder, delete empty folders on delete, ignore game files in AK, multifolder file picker, drag-and-drop in the pack contents tree.

Table

UI behaviour for the table editors:

• Adjust columns to content, Disable combos on tables, Extend last column, Tight table mode, Resize on edit.
• Tables use old column order (and a TSV variant) — restores the legacy column ordering.
• Disable UUID regeneration on DB tables — don’t auto-generate a new UUID on table save.
• Use right-side markers, Enable lookups, Enable icons, Enable diff markers.
• Colour pickers for Added, Modified, Error, Warning and Info marks (separate light/dark colour for each).

Debug

Hidden behind a Debug section header rather than a feature flag, but most of these only matter to developers:

• Check for missing table definitions, Enable debug menu (exposes the hidden Debug menu in the menu bar), Enable unit editor, Enable ESF editor, Use debug view for Unit Variant, Enable renderer (only when built with support_model_renderer).
• Use lazy loading — defer decoding files until they’re opened.
• Action buttons: Clear Dependencies Cache Folder, Clear Autosave Folder, Clear Schema Folder, Clear Layout Settings, Add RPFM to Runcher Tools.

Diagnostics

• Trigger diagnostics on Pack open.
• Trigger diagnostics on table edit.

There are no per-check toggles in the Preferences dialog — per-diagnostic ignores are configured per Pack via the Pack Settings tab and via the Diagnostics panel’s right-click “Ignore…” actions.

Telemetry

• Enable Usage Telemetry — opt-out anonymous action counters.
• Enable Crash Reports — opt-out automatic crash report upload to Sentry.

Both default to on. Both take effect immediately. See Telemetry & crash reports for the full picture.

AI

API keys for the AI-backed features (used by the Translator, among others):

• OpenAI API key.
• DeepL API key.

Shortcuts

The Preferences dialog has a Shortcuts button at the bottom that opens a separate KDE-style shortcuts dialog where every action can be rebound. See Keyboard shortcuts.

Where settings live on disk

• Server-side authoritative copy: <config>/settings.json. The exact <config> folder depends on platform (e.g. ~/.config/rpfm/ on Linux, %AppData%\rpfm\ on Windows). On debug builds, it’s the working directory.
• Backup: a single .bak file is written next to it when the main file fails to load, so a corrupted settings file can be recovered manually.
• UI-side cache: in-memory only — refreshed from the server on launch and on each preferences-saved event.