Default sketch on startup

[ptillisch]

I tracked down one solution here:

Impossible to load last sketch at startup

james1095: I've always found the auto-loading of the last used sketch to be extremely annoying and found this while looking for a way to disable it. Since I normally leave the software open until I'm finished and then when I load it I want it to open up with a new blank sketch. Is it possible to change the default behavior? The Arduino has done a lot of great things but man the software is awful. I totally agree with you. Changing the line "preferences.readonly=false" to "preferences.readon…

I'll provide more detailed instructions you can follow to disable the sketch restoration behavior of Arduino IDE 1.x:

1. Select File > Preferences... (or Arduino > Settings... for macOS users) from the Arduino IDE menus.
   The "Preferences" dialog will open.
2. Click the link on the line following "More preferences can be edited directly in the file" in the "Preferences" dialog.
   This will open a folder in your file manager.
3. Switch back to the Arduino IDE window.
4. Select File > Quit (or Arduino > Quit Arduino for macOS users) from the Arduino IDE menus.
   All Arduino IDE windows will close.
   ⓘ Arduino IDE overwrites the preferences file on exit, so it is necessary to exit Arduino IDE before manually editing preferences so that the IDE won't overwrite your changes.
5. Switch back to the file manager window.
6. Use any text editor to open the preferences.txt file you find in that folder.
7. Change the line that looks something like this:

   last.sketch.count=1
   

   to this:

   last.sketch.count=1
   

8. Change the line that looks like this:

   preferences.readonly=false
   

   to this:

   preferences.readonly=true
   

9. Save the file.

Please note that this makes it so that Arduino IDE can't save any preferences, so it will forget any changes you make to the preferences every time you exit the IDE. It also won't remember the selections from the Tools > Board, Tools > Port, Tools > Programmer, etc. menus you had selected during the previous session. And it won't update the File > Open Recent menu. So I'm not sure the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Another approach is described earlier in that topic:

Impossible to load last sketch at startup

james1095: when I load it I want it to open up with a new blank sketch. You can accomplish something like this by creating a shortcut that you use to start the Arduino IDE and adding the path to the blank sketch you want to load on startup. Something like this: E:\ProgramFiles\ArduinoIDE\arduino-nightly\arduino.exe E:\ProgramFiles\ArduinoIDE\arduino-nightly\examples\01.Basics\BareMinimum\BareMinimum.ino Or if you have .ino files associated with the Arduino IDE, you could just make a shortc…

Although this will require adjusting the invocation used to start Arduino IDE (similar to the solution I mentioned in post #2, it doesn't impact the usability of the IDE.