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Help Preferences

You can customize how MATLAB® displays documentation using Help preferences, including whether to open web or locally installed documentation and, on some non-English systems, what language to display the documentation in.

To open the Help preferences, on the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Preferences. Select MATLAB > Help and adjust the preference options as described in the table below.

PreferenceUsage
Documentation Location

Specify whether to view the documentation on the web at https://www.mathworks.com/help (recommended) or the documentation installed locally on your system. Viewing the web documentation requires an internet connection.

The documentation is not installed as part of a MATLAB or other product installation. (since R2023a) If you set the documentation location to Installed locally and MathWorks® documentation is not installed on your system, you can install it by clicking Install Documentation. If you run MATLAB on a system with no internet connection (permanently offline), you can download the documentation on a computer connected to the internet and then install it on your system. For more information, see Install Documentation.

If the documentation is already open in your system web browser, changes to this preference apply only to new tabs.

Quick Help Display

Specify whether help links display content in your system web browser or in a small window. This preference applies to reference pages or program help that you access using:

  • Help on Selection in context menus or F1

  • Function hints or the Function Browser

  • Links in error messages

Selected Products

Select the products to include for viewing and searching documentation in the Function Browser.

If your Documentation Location is set to view documentation on the web, then you can select Show products that are not installed to select and access documentation for all MathWorks products in the Function Browser.

Language (selected non-English systems only)

Specify whether the installed documentation and the documentation in other help windows appears in your system language or in English. This option is available for selected non-English systems only.

Before R2024b: Use the Language option to change the documentation language in the Help browser. Supported languages include English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian, or German.

For more information, including how to change the language for the documentation that opens in your system web browser, see Translated Documentation.

To adjust the font size of the documentation, adjust the zoom settings for your system web browser.

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