Application Folders

Application Folders

Genie 5 keeps all of your personal data — scripts, maps, logs, settings, per-character profiles — in a single per-user folder. Knowing where it lives is useful for backing up before an upgrade, editing scripts in your own editor, pointing the import dialog at a Genie 4 install, and syncing across machines.

Where Genie 5 lives

The location is resolved by AppPaths.Discover:

macOS

~/Library/Application Support/Genie5/

Paste that into Finder's Go → Go to Folder… (⇧⌘G). Library is hidden by default; the Go-to dialog reveals it.

Windows

%APPDATA%\Genie5\

…which resolves to C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Genie5\. Paste %APPDATA%\Genie5 into Explorer's address bar.

Linux

$XDG_DATA_HOME/Genie5/      # or, if XDG_DATA_HOME is unset:
~/.local/share/Genie5/

Portable mode (portable-first)

Genie 5 resolves its data root portable-first: a Config folder (or a genie5.portable / .portable marker) in the Genie program folder always wins, and everything lives alongside the app instead of in the per-user location. Useful for a USB-stick, a synced cloud folder, or a self-contained install. (This is the first thing AppPaths.Discover checks — local beats the per-user folder even when both exist.)

Where is "the Genie program folder"? For the Portable download it's the folder you extracted — the one holding Genie.exe, Update.exe, and your Config / Scripts / Maps folders. Internally the app actually runs from a current\ subfolder that gets replaced on every update, so Genie deliberately keeps your data one level up in that program folder — where you put it, and where it survives updates. Drop your Scripts, Maps, etc. beside Genie.exe, not inside current\.

First launch

On a brand-new install — when Genie finds no data beside the app and none in the per-user folder — it asks where to set up: Portable (this folder) or your User folder. The default action is Portable. Whatever you pick is created on the spot, so the prompt only appears once; later launches just find the existing data and skip straight to it.

What's inside

Genie5/
├── Config/      ← settings.cfg + rule .cfg files (shared / non-character)
├── Profiles/    ← per-character config: Profiles/<Char>-<Account>/*.cfg
├── Scripts/     ← your .cmd files
├── Maps/        ← zone files (Map##_*.xml) + ZoneConnections.xml
├── Logs/        ← AutoLog output, one file per character per session
├── Sounds/      ← sound files for #play / triggers
├── Plugins/     ← plugin host (roadmap)
└── Art/         ← image assets

Folder	What's in it	When to touch
Config/	settings.cfg (app settings) and the shared rule files: aliases.cfg, triggers.cfg, highlights.cfg, substitutes.cfg, gags.cfg, macros.cfg, variables.cfg, classes.cfg. Each is a plain-text list of the commands that recreate the rules.	Mostly managed via Edit → Configuration…. Hand-editable — Genie 5 reloads on next launch.
Profiles/	One subfolder per character (<Char>-<Account>/) holding that character's own copy of the rule .cfg files. The first time a character connects, the folder is seeded from your shared Config/ files, then diverges independently.	Created automatically. Edit the per-character files here, or via the GUI while that character is connected.
Scripts/	Your .cmd script files, plus any helper scripts you pull from the community repo.	Drop any script here to run it as .scriptname (or put .scriptname).
Maps/	Zone files in Genie 4's XML format (Map1_Crossing.xml, …) and ZoneConnections.xml (the cross-zone transit graph).	Populated via File → Import from Genie 4… or File → Update Maps from Official Repo…. Jump there via File → Open Maps Folder.
Logs/	When AutoLog is on, each session writes a <character>_<timestamp> log of plain in/out text.	Read-only from the app's view. Safe to delete or archive.

Note on formats. Genie 5 stores rule config as Genie 4-style .cfg files (one command per line) and zone maps as Genie 4-style XML — not JSON. This keeps round-tripping with the Genie 4 ecosystem and the community Maps repo clean.

Per-character profiles

Settings split into two tiers:

• Shared (Config/) — the baseline, used by sessions without a character (LIST mode, dev replay).
• Per-character (Profiles/<Char>-<Account>/) — each character gets its own aliases/triggers/etc., seeded once from the shared baseline. So your combat triggers on one character don't follow you onto a shopping alt.

The active profile directory is chosen at connect time from the character + account names.

Backups, syncing, multiple machines

Everything in Genie5/ is plain text (.cfg / .cmd / .xml / .log). Copy the whole folder to a backup drive or sync it via Dropbox / iCloud / OneDrive; Genie 5 picks it up on the destination machine next launch. To share GUI rules but keep scripts machine-local, sync only Config/ and Profiles/.

Resetting to defaults

1. Quit Genie 5.
2. Rename (don't delete) the Genie5/ folder to Genie5-old/.
3. Launch — a fresh empty Genie5/ is created.
4. Recover specific files later by copying them back from Genie5-old/ while the app is closed.

This is also the clean way to check "does my bug reproduce on a fresh install?" before reporting it.

Why this location?

~/Library/Application Support (macOS), %APPDATA% (Windows), and $XDG_DATA_HOME (Linux) are the standard per-user "non-document" data locations. They survive app reinstalls, get backed up by Time Machine / OneDrive, don't clutter your home directory, and aren't shared between OS users. The folder is created on first launch — nothing to set up in advance.