Change arduino hardware installation folder (Arduino15) to another drive

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

The arduino boards are currently installed in C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Arduino15 on my computer. The issue is that my C drive is almost full so I want to change the boards location to somewhere in D drive. I was able to change the sketchbook location from preferences but I can not find any way to change the Arduino15 folder location. How can I change the Arduino15 folder location to somewhere in the D drive? I am using Arduino 1.8.18

2

I think you may want to have a look at https://docs.arduino.cc/software/ide-v1/tutorials/PortableIDE/

The portable installation will give you a new Arduino IDE environment where everything is kept in one directory tree.

I have currently a dozen or so versions of the Arduino IDE on my PC all with different versions of cores and/or libraries for specific situations.

in fact this is the only reason why I cant upgrade to V2 of the IDE. It has no "portable installation" anymore. Good for you, you are on 1.8.18

3

You can create a symbolic link in \arduino15 pointing to the folder in D:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/131182-create-soft-hard-symbolic-links-windows.html

4

I do not know if it can be done. You can however create a portable install of IDE 1.x that you can place on any drive (and move around if needed).

  1. Download the zip from https://www.arduino.cc/en/software and extract it to a convenient location on your D-drive.
  2. In the directory where you extracted the zip, create a directory called portable.
  3. Start the IDE in the directory where you extracted the zip.
  4. The directory portable will now contain a sketchbook directory where your sketches and libraries will be stored by default.
    The directory will also contain a directory packages (I think this will be created at the moment that you upgrade a board package or install a new board package); packages basically replaces the arduino15 directory.
  5. Install board packages again;
  6. Adjust the sketch directory to where your sketches currently live or copy the things over to the sketchbook directory.
5

Hi @umersoftwares.

Is there a specific reason you are using Arduino IDE 1.x?

The reason I ask is because, as the other commenters explained, Arduino IDE 1.x doesn't have support for configuring an arbitrary location as you hoped, but only the decision between the default location and the portable subfolder of the Arduino IDE installation folder when in "portable" mode. However, Arduino IDE 2.x does have support for configuring an arbitrary location.

6

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