Hello all! First post, long time user both personally and professionally. KiCad is awesome, a stout thank you to all the developers!
Quick question: as a single user with two computers, is it possible to change the Preferences Directory to use a network location so I can share the same preferences with both computers? I realize that I can copy the preference files, but don’t want to manage keeping them in sync.
Thanks!
Euhm, you probably mean the Configuration Directory. From the manual:
If a previous version of KiCad is detected, you will have the option to import the settings from that version. The location of the previous configuration files is detected automatically, but you may override it to choose another location if desired.
Please note that, the schematic symbol and footprint library tables from the previous version of KiCad will not be imported.
You may also choose to start with default settings if you do not want to import settings from a previous version.
KiCad stores the settings files in a folder inside your user directory. Each KiCad version will store its settings in a subfolder of that folder (except for KiCad 5.1 and earlier, which did not use subfolders). Those folders are:
Windows %APPDATA%\kicadLinux ~/.config/kicadmacOS /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/kicad
But Settings and Configuration names are a bit intertwined in the manual. It does not matter much as long it’s clear we are talking about the same thing.
And no, as far as I know KiCad has no built in way to use the configuration files from another location, but the paths are hardcoded into the program. Maybe you can deceive KiCad by creating links to some other location, but there have been problems with network drives before and it is dubious whether this would work at all. So not recommended.
Maybe your operating system has an option to synchronize user settings between accounts on different computers. I only have one PC and never attempted this. It’s also dependent on your OS. Maybe there is 3rd party software for such things.
Yeah, I think that we are talking the same thing. In Preferences → Common, there is a button at the bottom:
This points to: C:\Users\Shawn\AppData\Roaming\kicad\8.0 for me. That’s the path I was hoping to change, figured that might not be an option.
Thanks 
Whether you use the Settings or Configuration names, KiCad would have to store the path name in that same location. It is sort of searching for an egg, and then asking the egg in which chicken it is.
It’s possible via the KICAD_CONFIG_HOME environment variable. Not really intended to be generally used but it’s there.
We store $HOME/.config on the network and each host mounts it from the server. Works for all programs (incl. KiCad).
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