Fast switch on/off libraries

[elkesan]

How to fast switch on and off libraries?

Reason: depend of computer speed library load is very slow. Also location of the libraries is reason of slowness- my libraries are in NAS.

So, every times when I need library, it start “loading … libraries”. In schematic “add part”, “loading symbol libraries”. It is fast, only 20 second. But when I use Kicad from home, connection is over VPN, I must wait even 5 minutes.

Of course answer is, “use local libraries inside you c:” and “change you network faster” and “buy new computer”.

strong textBut: For “daily work” I use only my own libraries. It is, every times when I need any component, I copy symbol + footprint + 3D to my own library. strong text

It is, I need “general libraries” sometimes. From list I found Kicad internal libraries, Digikey libraries etc. But, list of the libraries is very long. So, if I want switch off libraries I does not need, I must click libraries off. Line by line. Symbol and footprint. And, when I need it, I must know library what I want use or click every library on. Line by line.

So, my question is, how I can select a group of libraries and fast switch on/off it?

[Tojan]

you can use the checkbox under “active” to disable/enable the load of certain libraries. I am not aware of a way to disable specific groups of libraries (however they would be defined)

[paulvdh]

As far as I know, there is no way to do this quickly within KiCad itself.
KiCad does not search for libraries, it only lists libraries in the sym-lib-table (for schematic symbols) and fp-lib-table (for footprints) files. On my linux box, the global versions of these files are:

~/.config/kicad/6.0/sym-lib-table
~/.config/kicad/6.0/fp-lib-table

And each project has these files for the project specific libraries.

You can use some manual or scripted approach to rename a bunch of different files to those file names.
I may require a restart of KiCad to see the changes in these files though.