Settings Window

Open Settings window to view and change settings

Description

MATLAB^® provides various settings for customizing MATLAB. You can use the Settings window to interactively access and modify MATLAB settings.

Some settings are not available or may vary in MATLAB Online™.

Open the Settings Window

To open the Settings window, do one of the following:

• MATLAB Toolstrip: On the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Settings.

• MATLAB command prompt: Enter preferences.

To view or change settings for MATLAB or related products, in the left pane of the Settings window, select a product and then select from the available categories. Change settings in the right pane of the Settings window and then click Apply or OK to accept the changes.

Settings take effect immediately and remain persistent across sessions of MATLAB.

Examples

Change MATLAB Output Color Settings

Open the Settings window with the MATLAB Colors Settings page selected.

preferences Colors

In the MATLAB output colors section, select the colors that you want to use from the Error text, Warning text, and Hyperlinks color palettes. The new colors appear in the Command Window sample area.

Programmatic Use

preferences

preferences opens the Settings window. If the Settings window is already open, MATLAB brings focus to the tool.

You also can access and set some MATLAB settings programmatically. For more information, see Access and Modify Settings Programmatically.

example

preferences page

preferences page opens the Settings window and selects the specified page.

example

More About

General Settings

You can set settings for the initial working folder, deleting files, and toolbox path caching.

On the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Settings. Select MATLAB > General. Then, adjust setting options as described in this table.

Setting	Usage
Random Number Generation (since R2023b)	Select the default algorithm and seed for the random number generator. When you first start a MATLAB session or call rng("default"), MATLAB initializes the random number generator using the default algorithm and seed that you have selected in this setting. If you do not change this setting, then MATLAB uses the factory value of "twister" for the Mersenne Twister generator with seed 0, as in previous releases.
Initial working folder	Select the last working folder from your previous MATLAB session, or specify the full path to a folder on your system. For more information, see MATLAB Startup Folder. If you create a startup.m file, cd commands in that file override the setting option.
Deleting files	Select an option to specify what MATLAB does with files you delete using the delete function. Selecting Delete permanently makes the delete function run faster. On Linux® systems, if you select Move to a temporary folder, MATLAB moves files to a subfolder with the prefix MATLAB_Files_ in the system temporary folder, as returned by the tempdir function.
Toolbox path caching	Select Enable toolbox path caching to have MATLAB cache matlabroot folder information across sessions for quicker startup performance.
	Click the Update Toolbox Path Cache button to add files to the matlabroot folder. (Use after you use tools not provided with MATLAB to create MATLAB files.) For more information, see Toolbox Path Caching in MATLAB.
Desktop language (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese systems only)	This option is only available on systems with the locale setting (or display language on Windows® 10) set to Japanese, Korean, or Chinese. Select the MATLAB desktop language. Supported languages include Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. This option affects the text in dialog boxes, button names, menu items, and error and warning messages. You must restart MATLAB for changes to the setting to take effect. For more information, see Change the MATLAB Desktop Language.

Confirmation Dialog Boxes Settings

You can specify whether MATLAB displays specific confirmation dialog boxes.

On the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Settings. Select MATLAB > General > Confirmation Dialogs. Then, adjust setting options as described in the table below.

This table summarizes the core MATLAB confirmation dialog boxes. There might be additional confirmation dialog boxes for other products you install, and some options are not available in MATLAB Online.

Setting	Usage
Warn before deleting Command History items	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you delete entries from the Command History window. For details, see Command History.
Warn before clearing the Command Window	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when, on the Home tab, in the Code section, you click Clear Commands. Does not appear when you use the clc function.
Prompt when editing files that do not exist	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you type edit filename and filename does not exist in the current folder or on the search path.
Prompt to exit debug mode when saving file	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you try to save a modified file while in debug mode.
Show Import Tool dialog for importing MAT and media files	Select this option to display the Import Tool dialog when importing MAT and media files.
Show Navigation Keyboard Shortcuts dialog automatically on session start	Select this option to display the Navigation Keyboard Shortcuts dialog automatically on session start. To display this dialog manually, use the Ctrl+/ keyboard shortcut.
Confirm before exiting MATLAB	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you quit MATLAB.
Confirm when deleting variables	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you delete variables from the workspace using menu items. Does not appear with the clear function. For details, see Save and Load Workspace Variables.

Tips

• To restore the default settings for a given release of MATLAB, delete all of the files in the corresponding settings folder. Use the prefdir command to determine the full path of the settings folder.

  For example, to restore the default settings for R2025a, type prefdir in the Command Window to determine the location of the settings folder.

  prefdir

  ans =
      'C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2025a'

  Close MATLAB, delete all of the files in the folder C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2025a and then start MATLAB again. MATLAB starts with all settings set to their default values.

  One file to consider keeping is history.m. For more information, see Modify Command History Settings.

Version History

Introduced before R2006a

R2025a: Preferences window renamed to Settings window

The Preferences window has been renamed to the Settings window and preferences are now referred to as settings.