Preferences

Open Preferences window to view and change preferences

Description

MATLAB^® provides various preferences for customizing MATLAB. You can use the Preferences window to access and set MATLAB preferences.

Some preferences are not available in MATLAB Online™.

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Open the Preferences

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

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

• MATLAB command prompt: Enter preferences.

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

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

Examples

Change MATLAB Output Color Preferences

Open the Preferences window with the MATLAB Colors Preferences 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 Preferences window. If the Preferences window is already open, MATLAB brings focus to the tool.

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

example

preferences page

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

example

More About

General Preferences

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

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

Preference	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 preference. If you do not change this preference, 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 preference 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.
	Select Update Toolbox Path Cache to add files to the matlabroot folder. (Use after you use tools not provided with MATLAB to create MATLAB files.) For details, see Toolbox Path Caching in MATLAB.
Desktop language (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese systems only)	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. For more information, see Change the MATLAB Desktop Language. This option is only available on systems with the locale setting (or display language on Windows® 10) set to Japanese, Korean, or Chinese. You must restart MATLAB for the preference to take effect.

Confirmation Dialog Boxes Preferences

You can specify whether MATLAB displays specific confirmation dialog boxes.

On the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Preferences. Select MATLAB > General > Confirmation Dialogs. Then, adjust preference 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.

Preference	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.
Confirm when overwriting variables in MAT-files	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you save variables by dragging them from the Workspace browser onto a MAT-file in the Current Folder browser.
Confirm when overwriting workspace variables via drag-and-drop	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you load variables by dragging them from the Details Panel of the Current Folder browser to the Workspace browser or Command Window.
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.
Prompt to save on activate	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you have unsaved changes to a figure and program file and you activate the UI by clicking the Run button, for example. For details, see GUIDE Preferences.
Prompt to save on export	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you have unsaved changes to a figure and program file and you select File > Export. For details, see GUIDE Preferences.
Confirm changing default callback implementation	Select this option to display a confirmation dialog box when you have modified a callback signature in GUIDE. For details, see GUIDE Preferences.
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 preferences for a given release of MATLAB, delete all of the files in the corresponding preferences folder. Use the prefdir command to determine the full path of the preferences folder.

  For example, to restore the default preferences for R2021a, type prefdir in the Command Window to determine the location of the preferences folder.

  prefdir

  ans =
      'C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2021a'

  Close MATLAB, delete all of the files in the folder C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2021a and then start MATLAB again. MATLAB starts with all preferences set to their default values.

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

Version History

Introduced before R2006a