Only found out about custom environment variables that can be used as path aliases yesterday, so I may not be using correctly. Today, when I opened KiCad, they were not present. I have re-added them and restarted the PC. They seem to be sticking for now. However, this behaviour is reminiscent of Custom path environment variables ignored by step export?
Where the problem seemed to go away without explanation.
I went to check what had happened in Manage Symbol Libraries and saw this at the bottom:
That field was definitely not blank after I set everything up in Configure Paths menu yesterday, and KiCad was automatically substituting it in when I selected a folder within the path I had assigned to KICAD_USER_SYMBOL_DIR. I also set up environment variables for footprints and 3D models. Both worked in the sense that when I selected an object within the path, KiCad showed the file path with the variable substituted in.
I have now readded it:
I have also restarted the PC and it seems to have stayed. However, one difference is that now “Available path substitutions” in Manage Symbol Libraries does not show ${KICAD_USER_SYMBOL_DIR} as an option…
Please could someone explain what the expected behaviour for “Available path substitutions” is when custom environment variables are present? And whether there are any clues as to why all mine were deleted from Configure Paths but not my project’s Manage Symbol Libraries menu?
Application: KiCad x64 on x64
Version: 9.0.4, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.8
FreeType 2.13.3
HarfBuzz 10.2.0
FontConfig 2.15.0
libcurl/8.13.0-DEV Schannel zlib/1.3.1
Platform: Windows 11 (build 26200), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
Build Info:
Date: Aug 18 2025 00:41:45
wxWidgets: 3.2.8 (wchar_t,wx containers)
Boost: 1.88.0
OCC: 7.9.1
Curl: 8.13.0-DEV
ngspice: 44
Compiler: Visual C++ 1942 without C++ ABI
KICAD_IPC_API=ON
Locale:
Lang: en_GB
Enc: UTF-8
Num: 1,234.5
Encoded кΩ丈: D0BACEA9E4B888 (sys), D0BACEA9E4B888 (utf8)