Default sketch on startup

[ptillisch]

@stitech

NOT from start menu

I just tried it with the approach I described in post #2 and that worked fine for me.

I don't have Arduino IDE 1.x associated with .ino files on my system, and I don't like messing with that sort of thing because I have had bad experiences with Windows stubbornly remembering file associations no matter what I try to get it to forget. Since there is an alternative approach, I don't feel the need to do it for the sake of this support effort. So I didn't try to reproduce the exact problem you had.

@stitech

NOT from taskbar

It works fine for me with the approach from post #2.

I was surprised to find that I was not able to pin the Arduino IDE 1.x application to the Windows taskbar in the normal way, where I start the application, right-click its taskbar icon, then select "Pin to taskbar" from the context menu. However, I was able to accomplish it by dragging the shortcut to the taskbar. That approach is probably superior anyway, as it guarantees the pinned item is the shortcut and not just the application itself.

@stitech

it's a workaround, not a proper solution.

If you want to wait for the developers to implement a proper solution, that is fine. If you want to implement the proper solution yourself, that is fine. I'm here to try to provide solutions that anyone can use right now with the software we have now.

@stitech

if AutoSave is still on, you need to do this again and again.

That depends on what your goal is. @lgrant stated the following goal:

@lgrant

Is there a way to change the default sketch that loads on startup?

I interpreted this as wanting Arduino IDE to open a specific sketch that exists on disk. The solution I provided does just that.

It seems that your goal is to make Arduino IDE create a new sketch on startup, not to make it open a specific existing sketch. If that is your goal, you could try the (admittedly less than ideal) solution described here:

@pert

f you truly wanted a new blank sketch, you could make a script that first runs the command:

arduino --pref last.sketch0.path= --save-prefs

That will make it so the IDE forgets the last opened sketch an so falls back to the default behavior of opening a new sketch. Then runs the command to start the Arduino IDE:

arduino

The tricky thing is that the first command takes a ridiculously long time to finish and the preference is only saved after that is done. So you need to make sure your script only runs the second command once the first one is done. You might expect that to happen as a matter of course, but it's not so. A Windows batch file would look like this:

arduino --pref last.sketch0.path= --save-prefs | more
arduino