There are multiple reasons to backup the configuration of your IDE:
- You have changed a setting, but you don’t remind which one, and something went wrong: bad performance, bugs, or just an unwanted behavior.
- An IDE minor update broke something and corrupted the configuration, and the JetBrains Toolbox rollback feature did not help (or you forgot to activate it). I say “minor” update because major updates migrate IDE’s configuration and cache to new directories, thus the old config still exists and is intact.
- You will reinstall your OS or you will get a new computer, and you don’t want to reconfigure everything.
- etc.
The good news is that it’s easy to backup your IDE. Use your favorite backup software to create copies of these directories:
- The IDE’s configuration, which also contains all installed third-party plugins (and, sadly, bundled plugins updates). You can find the configuration path here.
- Optionally, the IDE’s cache, named “System” in the linked article. It contains the indexes, the state of the Project views (which paths are expanded), things like that.
You can also find these directories by going to Help > Diagnostic Tools > Special Files and Folders.
Backing up and restoring IDE’s configuration will help you to get a fully functional IDE within a few minutes: reinstall the desired IDE version if needed (or use the Rollback feature of the JetBrains Toolbox) and your backup, and that’s it.
Do the same thing with the IDE’s cache (not recommended if this is an old backup) if you want to avoid the long indexing. I personally include a copy of the cache in my backups, but I filter out these sub-directories: “android”, “caches”, “full-line”, “global-model-cache”, “icon-cache”, “index”, “jcef_cache”, “kotlin-dist-for-ide”, “log”, “Maven”, “plugins”, “pwa”, “splash”, mostly because they can be recreated quickly (except for the indexes, but I’m OK with that), and it preserves the state of the Project views and the Local History.