Preferences

Setting Preferences

Use preferences to specify options for MATLAB® tools, as follows:

  1. Select File > Preferences. Alternatively, click the Preferences button on the desktop toolbar; if the button is not on the toolbar, you can add it—for information, see Toolbars Preferences for the MATLAB® Desktop and Editor.

  2. In the left pane of the Preferences dialog box, preferences appear for MATLAB tools as well as for any other MathWorks™ products installed on your system.

    Choose a tool and click the + to display more preferences for that tool. From the expanded list, select the entry you want. The right pane shows the preferences for that item.

  3. Change settings. Click Apply or OK to set the preferences. Preferences take effect immediately. They remain persistent across sessions of MATLAB.

Note that some tools allow you to control these settings from within the tool without setting a preference. Use that method if you only want the change to apply to the current session.

Function Alternative

Open the Preferences dialog box using the preferences function.

Summary of Preferences

Preference

What You Can Specify

General Preferences

Toolbox path caching, figure window printing, delete function behavior, MAT-file save formats, confirmation dialogs, source control, and multithreaded computation.

Keyboard

Key bindings, tab completion, and delimiter matching for the Command Window and the Editor.

Fonts

Font type, style, and size for desktop tools. Customize for any tool.

Colors

Colors for text, background, syntax highlighting, and hyperlinks in desktop tools.

M-Lint

Show or hide M-Lint messages in the Editor M-Lint automatic code analyzer and in the M-Lint Code Check Report.

Toolbars

Remove, add, and rearrange controls on the MATLAB and Editor toolbars.

Command Window

Numeric format and display, accessibility, and tab size.

Command History

Display, filtering, and saving.

Editor/Debugger

Editor type, startup options, display, tab size and indenting, language, including M-Lint messages, and autosave.

Help

Product filter and synchronization.

Web

Internet proxy server settings.

Current Directory

Number of entries in history and display options.

Variable Editor

Numeric format, use of Enter key, and decimal separator.

Workspace

Statistical calculation options.

GUIDE

Display options for GUI-building tool.

Time Series Tools

Property Editor dialog and x-axes warning dialog.

Figure Copy Template

Application, text, line, uicontrols, axis, format, background color, and size.

Other products

Preferences for other installed MathWorks products.

Preferences File — matlab.prf

Preferences are stored in a preferences file, matlab.prf. Type prefdir in the Command Window to see the full pathname for the preferences directory that contains matlab.prf. The preference directory also contains related files.

On Apple® Macintosh® platforms, the directory might be in a hidden folder, for example, myname/.matlab/R2008a. To access the directory, select Go > Go to Folder in the Apple Mac OS® Finder. In the resulting dialog box, type the path returned by prefdir and press Enter.

The matlab.prf file is loaded when MATLAB starts and is overwritten when you close MATLAB.

The exact name of the preferences directory that MATLAB uses depends on the release. When you install a new version of MATLAB, MATLAB tries to use your existing preferences from the previous version, where possible. For more information on the preference directory filename and the preference migration process, see the reference page for prefdir.

  


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