Where does Photoshop 2024 keep it’s preferences in OS Sonoma

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 17, 2024
4 replies
6406 views

According to Adobe's onlne help Photoshops preferences on a Mac are kept in

macOS: Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings. (See attached screenshot)

When I navigate to my user library there is no Preference folder at all - only Preference Panes. (See attached screenshot).

Somehow Photoshop is remembering tailored settings like my very individual workspace for example. It's keeping them somewhere. So where, if this Preferences file does not exist where Adobe tells me it should? Its not in the presets directory, I've checked that very carefully.

I've used directory searches everywhere with no success.

Please can anyone enlighten me. I really want to back up my preferences but cannot do this in the way Adobe instructs me.

macOS

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

I have looked and can't see the file locations link, so I'll add it just in case.

https://helpx.adobe.com/nz/photoshop/kb/preference-file-names-locations-photoshop.html

Conrad_C

Community Expert

I have a test Mac on macOS 14.2 Sonoma, and the Preferences folder is exactly where it should be, and the preferences for Photoshop 2024 and older versions of Photoshop are there. And I have not read anywhere that Apple changed anything about this in Sonoma.

The posted screen shots look correct because the path is shown, as long as Mac SSD is the currently booted system volume. If they are correct, then here is the thing: The missing Preferences folder contains the preferences for every application on that Mac, including Apple applications. If the Preferences folder is really missing, any customized preferences in any app should also be gone.

Therefore, it’s very clear that this is not actually a Photoshop problem; it needs troubleshooting at the macOS level because a missing Preferences folder should affect everything. (It would be a Photoshop problem if the Preferences folder was easily found with all expected app preferences in it, and the only thing missing was the Photoshop preferences folder. But that is not the case here.)

If other apps are showing customized preferences, then that would be weird, it means Preferences does exist, because other Mac apps can get them, so just figure out where they are looking, although that isn’t as easy as it sounds. One way to back-door that is to think of an app that has a button in it that reveals its Preferences file, but I can’t remember which ones do that specifically.