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Accessing Your Advanced Settings

Updated

Note: Starting in Parsec version 150-89, Parsec will move any advanced configurations from config.txt to config.json. You can still add your configuration options to config.txt, and Parsec will move them to config.json, for backwards compatibility. Continue reading further below to learn more.

 

You can access the configuration file going into Parsec's settings, scrolling to the bottom and clicking "edit the configuration file directly". These are available on all platforms, except Android.

To modify the settings successfully, make sure to save the changes to the file, then restart Parsec (via right-clicking the small tray bar icon at the bottom on Windows, or the macOS menu at the top).

edit_the_configuration_file.png

Alternatively, you can find config.txt and the newer config.json in the folders shown below. We recommend changing config.txt at the moment, but you can learn more about the newer config.json by reading further below in this article.

  • Windows:
    • Per User installation: %appdata%\Parsec\
    • Per Computer installation (formerly called 'Shared'): %programdata%\Parsec\
  • macOS:
  • Linux: ~/.parsec/

You can see a list of the available configuration options here.

 

New config.json file in Parsec 150-89

Starting in Parsec version 150-89, Parsec will move any advanced configurations from config.txt to config.json. This new configuration file exists in the same location as config.txt. You can still add your configuration options to config.txt, and Parsec will move them to config.json, for backwards compatibility.

Keep in mind that the configurations are only moved if the file is correctly saved and Parsec is restarted, as usual. The settings in the config.txt file will be cleared once the settings have been saved and migrated.

Modifying the config.json file

If you modify the config.json file, your modifications must be valid JSON otherwise the file will be reset. You can make sure the JSON is valid by copying the config.json file (or the characters inside) to jsonlint. Similarly to config.txt, it'll be necessary to save the file and restart Parsec, for the changes to apply. The config.json file can be found in the same location as config.txt (see the folder paths further at the start of this page for more information).

What's the difference?

Here's an example of the old config.txt format:

host_virtual_monitors=2
host_name=My_computer

And here's an example of the new config.json format:

"host_virtual_monitors": {
	"value": 2
},
"host_name": {
	"value": "My_computer"
}

Why are we doing this?

We're doing this to make way for greater control for Parsec for Teams administrators in the future. Our simple config.txt file didn't give enough flexibility to create the complex rulesets our Parsec for Teams customers have asked for. Over time we will add more options to each setting.

 

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