- Qt 6.12
- All Overviews
- Deploying Qt Applications
- Using qt.conf
- Qt 6.12.0 Reference Documentation

Deploying Plugins ◦ Best Practice Guides

# Using qt.conf

You can use the `qt.conf` file to override paths or to specify arguments to be passed to the platform plugins.

## Format and Location

The `qt.conf` file is an INI text file, as described in the QSettings documentation.

QLibraryInfo will load `qt.conf` from one of the following locations:

1. `:/qt/etc/qt.conf` using the resource system
2. on macOS, in the Resource directory inside the application bundle, for example `assistant.app/Contents/Resources/qt.conf`
3. in the directory containing the application executable, i.e. QCoreApplication::applicationDirPath() + QDir::separator() + "qt.conf"

## Overriding Paths

The `qt.conf` file can be used to override the hard-coded paths that are compiled into the Qt library. These paths are accessible using the QLibraryInfo class. Without `qt.conf`, the functions in QLibraryInfo return these hard-coded paths; otherwise they return the paths as specified in `qt.conf`.

Without `qt.conf`, the Qt libraries will use the hard-coded paths to look for plugins, translations, and so on. These paths may not exist on the target system, or they may not be accessible. Because of this, you may need `qt.conf` to make the Qt libraries look elsewhere.

The file should have a `Paths` group which contains the entries that correspond to each value of the QLibraryInfo::LibraryLocation enum. See the QLibraryInfo documentation for details on the meaning of the various locations.

Entry | Default Value
--- | ---
`Prefix` | QCoreApplication::applicationDirPath()
`Documentation` | `doc`
`Headers` | `include`
`Libraries` | `lib`
`LibraryExecutables` | `libexec` on Unix, `bin` on Windows
`Binaries` | `bin`
`Plugins` | `plugins`
`QmlImports` | `qml`
`ArchData` | `.`
`Data` | `.`
`Translations` | `translations`
`Examples` | `examples`
`Tests` | `tests`
`Settings` | `.`

Absolute paths are used as specified in the `qt.conf` file. All paths are relative to the `Prefix`. On Windows and Linux, the `Prefix` is relative to the directory containing the application executable (QCoreApplication::applicationDirPath()). On macOS, the `Prefix` is relative to the `Contents` in the application bundle. For example, `application.app/Contents/plugins/` is the default location for loading Qt plugins. Note that the plugins need to be placed in specific sub-directories under the `plugins` directory (see How to Create Qt Plugins for details).

Note: For backwards-compatibility, the entry `Qml2Imports` is valid in the `Paths` section and is treated as fallback for `QmlImports`.

For example, a `qt.conf` file could contain the following:

     [Paths]
     Prefix = /some/path
     Translations = i18n

Note: The backslash character is treated as a special character in INI files (see QSettings). It is therefore recommended to use forward slashes for paths on Windows as well. Otherwise, an escape character is required:

     Prefix = c:\\SomePath

Since Qt 6.8, it is possible to provide more than one path per entry. They have to be provided as a comma separated list. For example

     QmlImports = "/path/to/imports1","/path/to/imports2"

It is possible to add spaces before and after the comma. It is also possible to omit the quotes around entries if path do not contain commas or spaces.

## Configuring Arguments to the Platform Plugins

The `qt.conf` may contain a `Platforms` group, whose keys are comma-delimited lists of arguments to be passed to the platform plugin. The key name is the name of the platform plugin with the first letter upper-cased followed by `Arguments`.

For example:

     [Platforms]
     WindowsArguments = fontengine=freetype

would cause the Windows platform plugin to use the FreeType font engine.

## How to deal with parallel installations of older Qt versions

For environments that require an installation of an earlier major version of Qt as well, it is possible to use a version-specific qt.conf. This is often necessary in transition phases from one Qt version to the next, or to avoid conflicts caused by an existing file without version.

For this purpose, a file named `qt6.conf` can be used instead of the `qt.conf` file. If both files exist in the directory described above, `qt6.conf` is used.

Deploying Plugins ◦ Best Practice Guides