Blender – keep settings and add-ons between versions

This is something I encountered when I installed new Blender versions and I thought I can share my solution so others can use it too if they want.

So with a new Blender version installation, everything – user settings, add-ons etc. – is reset to the default values, losing potentially hours or days of your setting up time that you spent to put everything as you need it.

So the way I deal with it is, after I install a new Blender version, I just copy the user setting file and the addons from the old version to the new one. Blender installs those in a specific folder where there are all of the above

On Windows, navigate to: %APPDATA%\Blender Foundation\Blender
That will open the folder C:/Users/{YOUR_USERNAME}/AppData/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender

On Mac, navigate to: Users/*USERNAME*/Library/Application Support/Blender/config
Note: sometimes the /Library folder is hidden on a Mac. In your Finder, click Go in the menu, then hold down the Option key to see /Library as an option.

On Linux, navigate to: ~/.config/blender

In that “Blender” folder you will see a list of folders with all the previously installed versions containing the user preferences and add-ons.
To copy your old user settings, all you need to do is get in the previous version folder, then “config” folder, then copy the “userpref.blend” file, then go up two folders, then into your newly installed version, then “config” and paste it there, overwriting the existing “userpref.blend” file.

The add-ons work the same way. You copy them from the old “…/3.x/scripts/addons/” folder to the new version, same folders.