User Data Locations
Songs, Themes, NoteSkins, Characters, and other custom content should be loaded from StepMania's user data folder, using the subfolders within.
This is different than older versions of StepMania (e.g. SM3.9) where all custom content was added directly into the primary install folder. Separating the application from your content will make it easier to upgrade to new versions of SM5 later without accidentally deleting your content.
The location of your user data folder varies by OS:
If you're using SM5.0.12:
| Windows 10, 8, 7 | C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\StepMania 5\ |
| macOS | /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/StepMania 5/ |
| Linux | /home/USERNAME/.stepmania-5.0/ |
If you're using SM5.1-beta:
| Windows 10, 8, 7 | C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\StepMania 5.1\ |
| macOS | /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/StepMania 5.1/ |
| Linux | /home/USERNAME/.stepmania-5.1/ |
In each of these paths, USERNAME will be your OS username.
🔷 Tip: If you find yourself adding content frequently, you may wish to create a shortcut there. The user content folder can be tedious to manually navigate to.
In Windows 10, you can find your AppData folder by typing %appdata% into the Windows search bar in your taskbar.
In older versions of Windows, you can type %appdata% into a Run dialog (Windows key + R).
The ~/Library/ folder is hidden by default, but you can unhide it or copy/paste the appropriate path from above into Finder's Go To Folder... dialog.
Many file managers (Nautilus for Ubuntu, Thunar for Mint's Xfce, etc.) will hide folders that begin with . by default, but allow you to toggle this on/off with Control + H.
In some cases, such as if you are running StepMania from a removable disk or otherwise do not wish to store custom content in your home directory, StepMania can be configured to read from its installation folder instead. Longtime players may recognize this configuration as where custom content was installed for SM3.9.
To activate Portable Mode, create a blank text file named Portable.ini in the folder where StepMania was installed. User data will now be stored within and loaded from a Save folder within the installation folder (for example, ./StepMania/Save/Songs/ and ./StepMania/Save/NoteSkins/).
The Preferences.ini file contains settings that can be used to load content (songs, courses, themes, etc.) from locations different from the user data folder or where StepMania is installed. This is useful if you are running multiple builds of StepMania and wish to keep your song library synchronized between them, or if you want to store your content on a different hard drive or partition.
You can add multiple paths on each Additional* preference by separating them with a comma.
For example:
AdditionalSongFolders=C:/SomeFolder/Songs,E:/Coolpath/Songs
/ in these paths. This means that you cannot simply copy/paste paths with back slashes in; you'll need to replace each back slash with a forward slash
For example, a Windows path like H:\StepMania5\Songs should be added like AdditionalSongFolders=H:/StepMania5/Songs
Adds additional content. The engine will treat the path similarly to the user data folder, so multiple subfolders of content and add-ons (i.e. "Songs", "NoteSkins", "Themes", etc.) can be placed inside it.
Adds additional songs. The engine will treat the path as a folder named /AdditionalSongs/, like for example /AdditionalSongs/SomeGroupFolder/SomeSongHere/
Adds additional courses.