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I am having some low level issues with IntelliJ on my mac, I really want to just zero everything out and start over. But even after removing the application and re-installing it, IntelliJ still remembers things like what the last project was, what licensing key to use etc. Where is this information stored? And what is the best way to clear it out?

kalak451
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    Good question. I wonder if it would be a better fit on Super User (as it's not really a programming q) though. On the other hand, SO surely is full of IDE settings questions... – Jonik May 05 '10 at 15:27

7 Answers7

71

Normally information like this will be found in one of the following places in OS X:

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/AppName

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.appname.plist

/Users/username/Library/Application Support/AppName

/Library/Preferences/AppName

/Library/Preferences/com.appname.plist

/Library/Application Support/AppName

If the app adheres to the standard OS X conventions you weill find info in one or all of these places. If it doesnt store here you might check for a /Users/username/.intellij folder or something similar in your home directory

prodigitalson
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    Perfect! The data was stored across: /Users/username/Library/Preferences/AppName /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.appname.plist – kalak451 May 05 '10 at 15:09
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    BTW, this also happens in Windows, one thing is the installation and other the personal configuration. – OscarRyz May 05 '10 at 15:21
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    There is more stuff, like /Library/Caches You can run find / -iname *intellij* 2>/dev/null to find all Intellij related files. – Wojciech Bednarski Nov 21 '11 at 01:51
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    @WojciechBednarski Markdown ate the *s you need around intellij. – Dave Cameron Jul 06 '12 at 20:09
  • @DaveCameron what do you mean? – Wojciech Bednarski Jul 06 '12 at 20:39
  • @WojciechBednarski I think you wanted asterisks (shell wildcards) around 'intellij' in the find command, but StackOverflow's wiki markup interpreted them as italicizing intellij instead. I can't figure out a way to escape them in comments though, so it is probably not too helpful of me to point it out. – Dave Cameron Dec 15 '12 at 15:27
59

I just ran through this and here is the list of files that I had to delete for IntelliJ 13:

~/Library/Preferences/com.jetbrains.intellij.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.jetbrains.intellij.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea13
~/Library/Caches/IntelliJIdea13
~/Library/Application Support/IntelliJIdea13
~/Library/Caches/com.jetbrains.intellij
~/Library/Logs/IntelliJIdea13
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.jetbrains.intellij.savedState
mimming
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7

For AppCode (Objective C IDE) 1.0.4, on OSX, the path is: ~/Library/Preferences/appCode10

Kevin Trowbridge
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5

I just checked, and IntelliJ IDEA (at least 9.x versions) seems to store its global settings in ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea90CE/

Update: IntelliJ IDEA 10 uses ~Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea10/ and 12 ~Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea12/. You'll probably find it for whatever version you're on.

(Where ~ is your home directory.)

Best way to clear it? Well, just delete the whole directory. :-) Or, if you suspect there might be something useful there after all, move it to a new name.

Jonik
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run the following commands in terminal to remove completely. worked for me

rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.jetbrains.intellij.plist
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.jetbrains.intellij.plist.lockfile
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/com.jetbrains.intellij*
rm -Rf ~/Library/Logs/IntelliJIdea13
rm -Rf ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.jetbrains.intellij.savedState
rm -Rf /Applications/IntelliJ*  
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJ*  
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.intellij.*  
rm -Rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.intellij.*  
rm -Rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/IntelliJ*  
rm -Rf ~/Library/Logs/IntelliJ*  
rm -Rf ~/Library/Caches/IntelliJ*  
rm -Rf ~/.IntelliJ*  
rm -Rf ~/Library/Intellij*
sravan ganji
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0

For those with newer versions like 2016, here's a guide to tell you all the places where IntelliJ can be at:

https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544519

Tony Tai Nguyen
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This always does it for me:

find ~/Library -type d -name 'IdeaIC*' -exec rm -rf {} ';'

youurayy
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