Reset Understand to default settings¶

If Understand behaves oddly — a broken layout, a bad option, or corrupt preferences — you can return it to its out-of-the-box state by deleting its settings file while the application is closed.

What you lose

Resetting clears application-level preferences: window layouts, editor/color/style choices, key bindings, recent-project list, and other options set under Tools → Options…. It does not touch your analyzed projects (.und), source code, or CodeCheck results. Per-project data (such as the search index) is stored separately and is unaffected.

1. Quit Understand¶

Fully exit the application first. On macOS the cached-preferences step below matters — settings are restored from a running cache if you skip it.

2. Delete the settings file¶

Understand stores settings under the SciTools organization, using the native format for each OS:

WindowsmacOSLinux

%APPDATA%\SciTools\Understand.ini

You may need to enable Show hidden files and folders to see it.

~/Library/Preferences/com.scitools.Understand.plist

~/Library is hidden in Finder — hold Option and open the Go menu to reveal Library. After deleting the file, run:

killall cfprefsd

Otherwise macOS restores the file from its cached preferences.

~/.config/SciTools/Understand.conf

3. Relaunch¶

Understand recreates the settings file with defaults on the next start.

Related SciTools data

The same SciTools settings directory (%APPDATA%\SciTools, ~/Library/Application Support/SciTools, or ~/.config/SciTools) also holds logs and the Db cache. Deleting only the settings file above is enough to reset preferences; you don't need to remove the whole directory.