Help tidying up old Blender versions (and methods to keep it neat)

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1

Can someone help me clean up my blender versions? It got cluttered and I need to find a good method for keeping it tidy with new versions being released and downloaded.

I need to understand where the files are located, and what kind of files are they.

On OS (C:) > Program Files > Blender Foundation I got:

  • Blender 3.2 (want to delete)
  • Blender 3.4 (want to delete) 915mb
  • Blender 3.6 (want to keep for compatibility reasons) 1gb

On OS (C:) > Program Files (x86) > Blender Foundation I got:

  • Blender 2.79 (want to delete) 276mb

Inside these Blender versions folders, there’s a scripts>addons folder. What are these addons? are these just the default one which come with Blender? Will there be any custom addons that I have added manually? or these go somewhere else?

Then there is another folder on: OS (C:) AppData > Roaming > Blender Foundation:
> 2.79, 2.80, 2.81, 2.83, ..... 3.3, 3.4, 3.6

Basically all the versions I have installed so far (15 in total!)
In total, all these folders are 54 GB!

What kind of content is inside these folders? From my understanding, it seems like these are custom stuff, like presets, configurations and custom addons.

If I delete all these folders except v3.6, will I possibily have issues opening older files?

All the custom addons I own, I have a copy in a seperate folder of mine. So I can always re-install them if need be.

I still have another folder located in OS (C:) called blender_addons (it’s empty) but I wonder why it’s here.

Questions:

  • Where are addons usually installed?

  • When I install a new blender version, will the addons from previous version be copied to new versions’ folder? (basically having duplicated files for every blender version)

  • Difference of content from Program Files to AppData>Roaming ?

  • Is there a logical reason why there isn’t just one folder for custom addons that all different blender versions use? Can I possibly make that folder, and install the addons there instead? Consequences?

  • Do you suggest any addon, tool or method to keep addons organized? Methods for updating blender without having duplicate files?

  • What methods/systems do you recommend to organize assets used across multiple files? I never know if I can delete an asset because I don’t know if there is a file using it. Is it recommended to always append assets to the .blend file? Any caveat with that?

Thank you so much! A discussion would be good to gather insight on this. :pray:

2

Welcome :tada:…

You may have a look into: docs.blender manual advanced blender_directory_layout.

3

Hello !

You can delete all these folder except those named with the version you wish to keep.

When installing a new blender (say 4.0) it’s best to keep the last blender version in the Roaming folder, as on first 4.0 launch you have the possibility to copy your settings to 4.0.

Basically in Roaming it’s indeed the interface settings , some cache stuff IIRC , addons you installed , stuff like that.

I think in the preference you can add some addon folder and probably manually copy them there. Read the doc on that since I think the folder should contain an addon folder where you put everything, not 100% sure tho…

The main issue with that is that since the python API is evolving addons are never guarantied to work with another version of blender they haven’t been developed for. Addons developers try to keep them compatible, but it’s not always possible.

At least it’s best to not merge addons shipped with blender. They are likely to be a bit different from version to versions to stay compatible with current blender version.

Well, it’s a whole other subject, you might want to create a new topic for that to avoid two discussion into one.
A quick answer is that linking is generally needed on big projects that involves collaborative work , and reuse of asset. Basically a character in a movie, you don’t want to append that in each shots but rather link it so changes can propagate to each shots and you also save disk space that way.
But this is always contained within a project.

If you work on your own on more simpler projects I wouldn’t recommend linking your assets, but rather appending your stuff for the very reason you mentioned.
You want your projects to be contained in one master directory and be easily moved / archived / send to someone else…
Same with your asset library, you want to move stuff around, remove stuff without endangering your projects…