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 three things:
- Factorio executables (./bin)
- Data for vanilla Factorio (./data)
- API documentation
User Data directory
The save directory is where user-personal files are stored, such as world saves. A list of all things found here:
- Save games (as zip files)
- User-installed/created Mods.
- User-installed/created scenarios.
- User configuration and settings storage
- Log File (factorio-*.log)
- Player data (player-data.json)
Note: Deleting the configuration file will result in a default replacement being generated upon the next Factorio launch.
It is recommended to create backups from this directory (of saves, config, etc) before installing a new version, or installing mods.
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 native Installer
Application directory:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Factorio
User data directory:
%appdata%\factorio
Mac OSX
Installation via Steam
Application directory:
/Users/<replace with your username>/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Factorio/factorio.app/Contents/
Installation via Installer
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 ~/.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).
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.