In this section:
Increasing productivity
To increase productivity of PyCharm, you can change settings that reside in the following locations (depending on your operating system) :
- On Windows systems:
or
<PyCharm installation folder>/bin/pycharm.exe.vmoptions
<PyCharm installation folder>/bin/pycharm64.exe.vmoptions
- On *NIX systems:
or
<PyCharm installation folder>/bin/pycharm.vmoptions
<PyCharm installation folder>/bin/pycharm64.vmoptions
- On OS X:
The file
/Applications/PyCharmXX.app/Contents/bin/pycharm.vmoptions
should be copied to~/Library/Preferences/PyCharmXX/pycharm.vmoptions
For the older versions, the settings are stored in
/Applications/pycharm<version>.app/Contents/Info.plist
.
Alternative ways for Windows and Linux platforms
PyCharm makes it possible to increase productivity without editing files in the PyCharm installation folder.
This is done in one of the two ways:
- Specify
PYCHARM_VM_OPTIONS
environment variable. This variable should contain the path to the file with the settings. - Create
$HOME/.PyCharmXX/idea$BITS.vmoptions
(for *NIX) or%USERPROFILE%\.PyCharmXX\pycharm%BITS%.exe.vmoptions
(for Windows) respectively.The value of the variable BITS:
- For 32-bit systems it is empty.
- For 64-bit systems it is 64.
Finally, you have to create:
For *NIX 32-bit:
$HOME/.PyCharmXX/pycharm.vmoptions
For *NIX 64-bit:
$HOME/.PyCharmXX/pycharm64.vmoptions
For Windows 32-bit:
%USERPROFILE%\.PyCharmXX\pycharm.exe.vmoptions
For Windows 64-bit:
%USERPROFILE%\.PyCharmXX\pycharm64.exe.vmoptions
If PYCHARM_VM_OPTIONS
environment variable is defined, or the file $HOME/.PyCharmXX/idea$BITS.vmoptions
(for *NIX) or
%USERPROFILE%\.PyCharmXX\pycharm%BITS%.exe.vmoptions
(for Windows) exists,
then this file is used instead of the file located in the PyCharm installation folder.
Thus, to avoid editing files in the PyCharm installation folder, one should:
- Do one of the following:
- Copy
<PyCharm installation folder>/bin/PyCharmXX.vmoptions
to$HOME/.PyCharmXX/pycharm$BITS.vmoptions
(for *NIX) or%USERPROFILE%\.PyCharmXX\pycharm%BITS%.exe.vmoptions
(for Windows) - Copy
<PyCharm installation folder>/bin/PyCharmXX.vmoptions
somewhere and save the path to this location into the environment variablePYCHARM_VM_OPTIONS
- Copy
- Edit the file in the new location.
Increasing heap size
To increase PyCharm heap size, you should copy the original pycharm.vmoptions
file from the
/Applications/pycharm<version>.app/Contents/bin/pycharm.vmoptions
to ~/Library/Preferences/pycharm<version>/pycharm.vmoptions
, then modify the -Xmx
setting.
Managing case of unicode literals
PyCharm allows defining whether non-ascii characters should use literals like '\u00AB'
or '\00ab'
.
This behavior is controlled by the system property idea.native2ascii.lowercase
. By default,
upper case characters are used.
If it is desirable to use lower case characters, do the following (depending on your platform) :
-
On Windows and *NIX: add the line
idea.native2ascii.lowercase=true
to the
bin/idea.properties
file, located under the product installation. -
On OS X:
Copy the file
/Applications/PyCharm.app/Contents/bin/idea.properties
to~/Library/Preferences/PyCharmXX/
, open it for editing, and add the lineidea.native2ascii.lowercase=true
It is essential to create a copy, since the settings are replaced rather than added.
For the older versions of PyCharm, open for editing the file
/Applications/PyCharm.app/Contents/Info.plist
, and add the following code:<key>idea.native2ascii.lowercase</key> <string>true</string>
to the section
<key>Properties</key> <dict> ... <dict>