File paths in Godot projects

This page explains how file paths work inside Godot projects. You will learn how to access paths in your projects using the res:// and user:// notations and where Godot stores user files on your hard-drive.

Path separators

To as many platforms as possible, Godot only accepts UNIX-style path separators (/). These work on all platforms, including Windows.

Instead of writing paths like C:\Projects, in Godot, you should write C:/Projects.

Accessing files in the project folder

Godot considers that a project exists in any folder that contains a project.godot text file, even if the file is empty. The folder that contains this file is your project's root folder.

You can access any file relative to it by writing paths starting with res://, which stands for resources. For example, you can access an image file character.png located in the project's root folder in code with the following path: res://some_texture.png.

Accessing persistent user data

To store persistent data files, like the player's save or settings, you want to use user:// instead of res:// as your path's prefix. This is because when the game is running, the project's file system will likely be read-only.

The user:// prefix points to a different directory on the user's device. On mobile and consoles, this path is unique to the project. On desktop, the engine stores user files in ~/.local/share/godot/app_userdata/[project_name] on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/Godot/app_userdata/[project_name] on macOS (since Catalina) and %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\[project_name] on Windows. [project_name] is based on the application name defined in the Project Settings, but you can override it on a per-platform basis using feature tags.

On HTML5 exports, user:// will refer to a virtual filesystem stored on the device via IndexedDB. (Interaction with the main filesystem can still be performed through the JavaScript singleton.)

Editor data paths

The editor uses different paths for user data, user settings, and cache, depending on the platform. By default, these paths are:

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Location

User data

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\[project_name]

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Godot/[project_name]

  • Linux: ~/.local/share/godot/[project_name]

User data (when use_custom_user_dir project setting is true)

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\[project_name]

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/[project_name]

  • Linux: ~/.local/share/[project_name]

Käyttäjäasetukset

  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Godot\

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Godot/

  • Linux: ~/.config/godot/

Cache

  • Windows: %TEMP%\Godot\

  • macOS: ~/Library/Caches/Godot/

  • Linux: ~/.cache/godot/

  • User data contains export templates and project-specific data.

  • User settings contains editor settings, text editor themes, script templates, etc.

  • Cache contains temporary data. It can safely be removed when Godot is closed.

Godot complies with the XDG Base Directory Specification on all platforms. You can override environment variables following the specification to change the editor and project data paths.

Muista

If you use Godot packaged as a Flatpak, the editor data paths will be located in subfolders in ~/.var/app/org.godotengine.Godot/.

Self-contained mode

If you create a file called ._sc_ or _sc_ in the same directory as the editor binary, Godot will enable self-contained mode. This mode makes Godot write all user data to a directory named editor_data/ in the same directory as the editor binary. You can use it to create a portable installation of the editor.

The Steam release of Godot uses self-contained mode by default.