What does environment variables mean?

what do they do ?, do I need them during updates ?

will they overwrite any of my own settings ?

No. They add KiCad specific entries.

yes

if you want to upgrade only, deselect.

I usually do this:

@straubm
once I didn’t pay attention and it screwed with my local library setup.

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I would have gussed that also, but seems not to be that way

I am aware they change the KiCad settings. Messed up my settings on my learning curve, I thought he ment the other environment variables not pertaining to KiCad. My bad.

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I did struggled too :smiley:
from Path Variable help:

Enter the name and path for each environment variable. Grey entries are names that have been defined externally at the system or user level. Environment variables defined at the system or user level take precedence over the ones defined in this table. This means the values in this table are ignored.
To ensure environment variable names are valid on all platforms, the name field will only accept upper case letters, digits, and the underscore characters.
KIGITHUB is used by KiCad to define the URL of the repository of the official KiCad libraries.
KISYS3DMOD is the base path of system footprint 3D shapes (.3Dshapes folders).
KISYSMOD is the base path of locally installed system footprint libraries (.pretty folders).
KIPRJMOD is internally defined by KiCad (cannot be edited) and is set to the absolute path of the currently loaded project file. This environment variable can be used to define files and paths relative to the currently loaded project. For instance, ${KIPRJMOD}/libs/footprints.pretty can be defined as a folder containing a project specific footprint library named footprints.pretty.
KICAD_PTEMPLATES is optional and can be defined if you want to create your own project templates folder.

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One more addendum… any customized template project file will be shot (component library settings), no matter what you select.
That’s my latest experience at least for the current state of affairs of how the symbol library settings are handled.

Now saved a copy and do some testing later to get this bug caught…

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