File paths in Godot projects

res:// and user:// notations and where Godot stores user files on your hard-drive.

Path separators

/). These work on all platforms, including Windows. C:\Projects, in Godot, you should write C:/Projects.

Accessing files in the project folder

project.godot text file, even if the file is empty. The folder that contains this file is your project’s root folder. res://, which stands for resources. For example, you can access an image file character.png located in the project’s root folder in code with the following path: res://character.png.

Accessing persistent user data

user:// instead of res:// as your path’s prefix. This is because when the game is running, the project’s file system will likely be read-only. user:// prefix points to a different directory on the user’s device. Unlike res://, the directory pointed at by user:// is guaranteed to be writable to, even in an exported project. user:// are: [project_name] is based on the application name defined in the Project Settings, but you can override it on a per-platform basis using feature tags. On mobile platforms, this path is unique to the project and is not accessible by other applications for security reasons. user:// will refer to a virtual filesystem stored on the device via IndexedDB. (Interaction with the main filesystem can still be performed through the JavaScript singleton.)

Editor data paths

The editor uses different paths for user data, user settings, and cache, depending on the platform. By default, these paths are:

• User data contains export templates and project-specific data.
• User settings contains editor settings, text editor themes, script templates, etc.
• Cache contains temporary data. It can safely be removed when Godot is closed. XDG Base Directory Specification on all platforms. You can override environment variables following the specification to change the editor and project data paths. Note Godot packaged as a Flatpak, the editor data paths will be located in subfolders in ~/.var/app/org.godotengine.Godot/.

  Self-contained mode

  ._sc_ or _sc_ in the same directory as the editor binary, Godot will enable self-contained mode. This mode makes Godot write all user data to a directory named editor_data/ in the same directory as the editor binary. You can use it to create a portable installation of the editor. Steam release of Godot uses self-contained mode by default. Note OS.get_executable_path(). Note that writing files in the executable path only works if the executable is placed in a writable location (i.e. not Program Files or another directory that is read-only for regular users).