What Is an INI File?

Why software programs use INI files, and how to view one

A file with the INI file extension is a initialization file for Windows or MS-DOS. These files are plain text files that contain settings that dictate how something else—usually a program—should operate.

Various programs use their own INI files but they all serve the same purpose. CCleaner, for example, uses an INI file to store the different options. This particular INI file is stored as the name ccleaner.ini under the CCleaner installation folder, usually at C:\Program Files\CCleaner\.

A common INI file in Windows called desktop.ini is a ​hidden file that stores information about how folders and files should appear.

How to Open and Edit INI Files

It’s not a common practice for people to open or edit INI files, but they can be opened and changed with any text editor. Just double-clicking on an INI file will automatically open it in the Notepad application in Windows.

See our Best Free Text Editors list for some alternative text editors that also edit INI files.

How an INI File Is Structured

INI files contain keys (also called properties) and some use optional sections to group keys together. A key should have a name and a value, separated by an equals sign, like this:

INI files work differently across programs. Some INI files are really tiny (a few kilobytes) with only one or two lines of information, and others can be extremely lengthy (several megabytes) with lots of customizable options.

In this example, CCleaner defines the English language with the 1033 value. So, when CCleaner opens, it reads the INI file to determine in which language to display the program text. Although it uses 1033 to indicate English, the program natively supports other languages, too, which means you can change it to 1034 to use Spanish instead.

The same can be said for all the other languages the software supports, but you have to look through its documentation to understand which numbers mean other languages.

If this key existed under a section, it may look like this:

This particular example is in the INI file that CCleaner uses. You can change this INI file yourself to add more options to the program because it refers to this INI file to determine what should be erased from the computer. This particular program is popular enough that there’s a tool you can download called CCEnhancer that keeps the INI file updated with lots of different options that don’t come built-in by default.

More Information on INI Files

Some INI files may have a semicolon within the text. These just indicate a comment to describe something to the user if they’re looking through the INI file. Nothing following the comment is interpreted by the program that’s using it.

Key names and sections are not case sensitive, at least in Windows. The same effect is produced in an INI file that uses uppercase letters as one that has lowercase letters.

A common file called boot.ini in Windows XP details the specific location of the Windows XP installation. If problems occur with this file, see How to Repair or Replace Boot.ini in Windows XP.

Although it’s safe to delete desktop.ini files, Windows recreates the file and apply default values to it. So, if you’ve applied a custom icon to a folder, for example, and then delete the desktop.ini file, the folder reverts to its default icon.

INI files were used a lot in early versions of Windows before Microsoft began encouraging the Windows Registry to store application settings. Now, even though many programs still use the INI format, XML serves same purpose.

If you’re getting «access denied» messages when trying to edit an INI file, it means you don’t have the proper administrative privileges to make changes to it. You can usually fix this by opening the INI editor with admin rights (right-click it and choose to run it as administrator). Another option is to copy the file to your desktop, make changes there, and then paste that desktop file over the original.

Some other initialization files you may come across that don’t use the INI file extension are CFG and CONF files. Some programs even stick with TXT.

How to Convert an INI File

There’s no real reason to convert an INI file to another file format. The program or operating system that’s using the file will only recognize it under the specific name and file extension that it’s using.

However, since INI files are just regular text files, you can use a program like Notepad++ to save it to another text-based format like HTM/HTML or TXT.

Total Commander

Forum — Public Discussion and Support

How to change configuration *.ini files location?

How to change configuration *.ini files location?

Post by *sidefx88 » 2007-04-21, 21:46 UTC

I have *.ini files of TC7 located in C:\Windows folder.
Now, I want to move this 2 files to the TC program folder.

How I tell TC that automatically get configuration from this new location?

Thanks in advance!

Post by *petermad » 2007-04-21, 23:03 UTC

Just move the two files to your TC program folder and put this line in the [Configuration] section of your wincmd.ini file:

Post by *sidefx88 » 2007-04-22, 05:11 UTC

Thanks a lot, Peter!

What does it mean the other parameters of this setting?

UseIniInProgramDir=1
UseIniInProgramDir=2
UseIniInProgramDir=3, and so on.

Post by *Clo » 2007-04-22, 07:57 UTC

Hello !

• In the Help¦Tutorial :

UseIniInProgramDir=Flags sum
This variable will only be read if the wincmd.ini is located in the same dir as the program.
It is the sum of the following values :

0: Disabled
1: Use wincmd.ini in the program-dir. if no other location is set via the registry or parameters
2: Use wcx_ftp.ini in the program-dir. if no other location is set via the registry or parameters
4: Override the registry settings (but not the command line parameters)

how to know

Post by *PeterTBCarp » 2008-01-08, 16:08 UTC

Yep, it’s in the Help file, but you’d be hard-pressed to find it. The Help file is looking frustratingly prehistoric now — 2008. Not that it ever looked very professional; a real mishmash of programmer’s jottings.

Question: if inireloc.exe fails (the prog mentioned in the dreaded Help file under wincmd.ini (isn’t it time to lose all vestiges of Win Cmdr. ) — we’re told that inreloc.exe is in the addons, but it doesn’t say where; we have to hunt through the addons to find it..) — if inireloc fails, reports back to Microsoft, and leaves the location of the inis unchanged, how do we make the change manually in the registry with regedit? WHERE in the registry is the entry? Our friend Help doesn’t elucidate; is there a reference to wincmd [grrr] or to totcmd [more sense]??

If inireloc fails; how then.

(And why isn’t this in Help?)

____________________
A PC without TC is like golf in the dark. Is very good. Not yet excellent, but very good.
Why do I have to search through German in this forum?
Why isn’t there a TC Knowledgebase? How about a Wiki?
Do new buyers understand the references to WinCmd in TC?
Will Help ever be updated from Windows 3.0 vintage?

eclipse.ini vm arguments – eclipse.ini File Location Mac, Windows

Core Java Tutorial

eclipse.ini is the configuration file used to control the Eclipse startup. We can configure Eclipse VM arguments such as JDK to be used (eclipse.ini vm), permgen space, maximum and minimum heap size using Xms, Xmx parameters.

Table of Contents

eclipe.ini File Location

For windows, it’s in the same directory as eclipse.exe file, as shown in below image.

For Mac OS X, it’s found inside the app. So if Eclipse app is in Downloads directory, eclipse.ini file location will be:

You can reach this location by first right clicking on Eclipse app and click on “Show Package Contents” and then in the next window navigate to Contents/Eclipse directory, as shown in below images.

Here is the example eclipse.ini file from my default eclipse installation.

Some important points about eclipse.ini file are:

1. Each line before -vmargs contains an option followed by the value for option.
2. All the lines after -vmargs are passed as JVM arguments, so all options and arguments for eclipse startup must be specified before -vmargs. For example -vm settings for JDK to be used.
3. –launcher.XXMaxPermSize specifies the maximum permgen space to use by eclipse launcher, increase this value if your eclipse startup is failing with out of memory error.
4. If you are getting Out of Memory errors, you should try to increase Permgen space and maximum heap space values. They are configured using VM arguments -XX:MaxPermSize, -Xms and -Xmx. Permgen space default value is configured as 256MB that is good for small to medium projects.

eclipse.ini vm argument

eclipse.ini vm argument is useful when you have multiple JDK installation and you want to make sure that your eclipse runs on a specific JVM, rather than picking system configured jdk path. It must be defined before -vmargs.

eclipse.ini vm argument Mac

My eclipse.ini file snippet showing -vm argument usage to configure eclipse to use JDK8 in Mac OS X.

You can configure it similarly for Windows or Linux operating systems. Just change the JDK bin directory path accordingly.

eclipse.ini Permgen Space

If you are getting java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space error, mostly when you are working on larger code base, doing maven update for large projects etc. , then you should increase Permgen space. Below is the configuration to increase permgen space to 512 MB in eclipse.ini file.

Note that there is no more Permgen space from Java 8 onwards, so setting this option will have no effect. However you will also not get out of memory error because of permgen space.

eclipse.ini Heap Space

If you are getting OutOfMemoryError related to Heap space, then you can try to increase the maximum heap size available to eclipse. You can easily do it by editing -Xmx value. For example, below snippet will increase the eclipse heap size to 2 GB.

QSettings — where is the location of the ini file?

I’m using QSettings to store some data as ini file in Windows. I want to see the ini file, but I don’t know what is the location of the ini file.

This is my code:

Where do I have to look? Or may be I miss the code which write it to the file? When does the QSettings write its values?

9 Answers 9

To print out the exact location of your settings file use method fileName method of QSettings class.

Console output looks then like:

I think you’ll find everything you’re looking for here : http://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-4.7/qsettings.html

It’s plateform specific, see under :

Platform-Specific Notes Locations Where Application Settings Are Stored

You can store Settings in files as well :

QSettings save location changes to the QSettings.Scope enum. QSettings save to the Local scope by default. On Linux, I found my local settings in:

If you create a QSettings without giving any specific path, the ini file will be located in the application path.

Be careful though : the application path might change : for instance, if you are developping your app with Qt Creator, in debug mode, the application path is in the /debug subfolder.

If you are running it in release mode, the application path is in the /release subfolder.

And when your application is deployed, by default, the application path is in the same folder as the executable (at least for Windows).

Check out the QStandardPaths class, it links to multiple standard paths including configuration on all supported platforms. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qstandardpaths.html

In linux you can use this snippet or insert this lines into your main code for find location of your file with python.

It should return an output like this.

/$HOME/.config/Organization Name/App name.conf

On Mac OSX, I found the file under at

The QSettings class provides persistent platform-independent application settings. Users normally expect an application to remember its settings (window sizes and positions, options, etc.) across sessions. This information is often stored in the system registry on Windows, and in XML preferences files on Mac OS X. On Unix systems, in the absence of a standard, many applications (including the KDE applications) use INI text files

in windows path is like below: C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\bbb

On Windows without providing an ini filename, you’ll find the data in the registry. Using this code snippet:

After running this code, you’ll see the output:

Now, opening the regedit tool and following the path list you got: 1

Not the answer you’re looking for? Browse other questions tagged qt ini qsettings or ask your own question.

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