Application directory

Overview

Depending on your installation method and OS, you will have one or two directories that contain Factorio assets.

Application directory

The application directory stores

• Factorio executables (./bin)
• Data for vanilla Factorio (./data)
• API documentation

User Data directory

• Save games (as zip files within ./saves)
• User-installed/created Mods (./mods)
• User-installed/created scenarios (./scenarios)
• User configuration (./config)
• Log File (factorio-*.log)
• Player data (player-data.json)

Note: Deleting the configuration file will result in a replacement being generated upon the next Factorio launch.

It is recommended to create backups from this directory before installing a new version.

Directory locations by OS and installation method

Windows

Installation via Steam

Application directory:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Factorio

User data directory:

%appdata%\factorio

Installation by Zip-package

Application directory and User data directory will be the location to which Factorio was unpacked.

For example, if you unpacked the zip to:

C:\Factorio

Then your saves can be found in:

C:\Factorio\saves

and mods in:

C:\Factorio\mods

Installation via Installer

Application directory:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Factorio

User data directory:

%appdata%\factorio

MacOSx

The application should be by default installed in the Apps-folder.

Whereas the data is stored under

/users/<replace with your username>/Library/Application Support/factorio

Which is equivalent to

~/Library/Application Support/factorio

You can type in this into the Finder (press SHIFT-COMMAND-G for goto folder) and put in exactly this line.' Or you can use in Finder the 'Find a folder' and write '~/Library/Application Support' (See Can't find Mods folder).

The factorio internal application-data can be found (when you have installed it) in

/Applications/factorio.app/Contents/data

Same directory structure as in Application support.

Linux

Data is stored under ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Factorio.

Installation via Steam

Data is stored under ~/.factorio.

Changing the application directory

You can create a file config-path.config to configure Factorio to any directory.

Please see this discussion (for MacOS, but should work on any other OS).

Windows: there is also the ZIP-Package, that can be installed in any directory.

The following discussion applies to version 0.11.13.

In order to change the application directory, user must edit the location of the "write-data" entry in the file __Game_Install_directory/config/config.ini. This affects the location of mods, scenario and temp.

If you want to move only the location of your save files you can change the the save directory using symlinks but this still means that all users of the computer will share the same data, including settings.

Linux

Update __Game_Install_directory/config-path.cfg

use-system-read-write-data-directories=true

Update __Game_Install_directory/config/config.ini

[path]
read-data=__PATH__executable__/../../data
write-data=.local/share/factorio

You could set the write-data value to .factorio if you prefer.

Once you have done this, you can remove write permissions to the entire game installation directory except for config/config.ini, which must be writable by all people who wish to play the game.

Note that if someone changes any options, in-game, those option changes will apply to everyone who plays on the same computer.

See also

• Download and Installation
• Install Guide
• Mods
• Installing Mods
• Forum discussion
• Linux Version - Save games in $HOME somewhere