QGIS Configuration¶

General Tab¶

• Prompt to save project changes when required
• Warn when opening a project file saved with an older version of QGIS
• Change Selection and Background color
• Change the QGIS Style
• Change the icon theme (choose between ‘default’, ‘classic’ and ‘gis’)
• Change icon size between 16, 24 and 32 pixel.
• Change the menu size
• Define double click action in legend (choose between ‘open layer properties’ and ‘open ‘) attribute table.
• Capitalize layer names in legend
• Display classification attribute names in legend
• Create raster icons in legend
• Hide splash screen at startup
• Show tips at startup
• Open identify results in a dock window (QGIS restart required)
• Open snapping options in a dock window (QGIS restart required)
• Open attribute table in a dock window
• Add PostGIS layers with double click and select in extended mode
• Add new layers to selected or current group
• Copy geometry in WKT representation from attribute table
• Attribute table behavior (choose between ‘Show all features’ (default), ‘Show selected features’,’Show features in current canvas’)
• Attribute table row cache
• Define Representation for NULL values
• Prompt for raster sublayers . Some rasters support sublayers - they are called subdatasets in GDAL. An example is netcdf files - if there are many netcdf variables, GDAL sees every variable as a subdataset. The option is to control how to deal with sublayers when a file with sublayers is opened. You have the following choices:
  • ‘Always’: always ask (if there are existing sublayers)
  • ‘If needed’: ask if layer has no bands, but has sublayers
  • ‘Never’: never prompt, will not load anything
  • ‘Load all’: never prompt, but load all sublayers
• Scan for valid items in the browser dock . The ‘Check extension’ option was designed to speed up the loading of a directory, which can be time-consuming when ‘Check file contents’ is activated and there are many files (tens or hundreds).
• Scan for contents of compressed files (.zip) in browser dock This option was also designed to speed up the loading of a directory. You have the following choices:
  • ‘Basic Scan’: checks that the extension is supported by one of the drivers
  • ‘Full Scan’: opens every file to check it is valid
  • ‘Passthru’: don’t use this option it will be removed in the next QGIS version

GDAL tab¶

GDAL is a data exchange library for raster files. In this tab you can define which GDAL driver to be used for a raster format as in some cases more than one GDAL driver is available.

Plugins tab¶

• Add Path(s) to search for additional C++ plugin libraries.

Rendering Tab¶

• By default new layers added to the map should be displayed
• Define Number of features to draw before updating the display.
• Use render caching where possible to speed up redraws
• Make lines appear less jagged at the expense of some drawing performance
• Fix problems with incorrectly filled polygons
• Use new generation symbology for rendering
• Define the default Raster settings for visualisation: ‘RGB band selection’, Use standard deviation and ‘Contrast Enhancement’
• Add/remove Path(s) to search for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) symbols

Additionally you can define whether to save the path for svg textures absolute or relative in the General tab of the Settings ‣ Project Properties menu.

Map tools Tab¶

• The Mode setting determines which layers will be shown by the Identify tool. By switching to ‘Top down’ or ‘Top down, stop at first’ instead of ‘Current layer’ attributes for all identifiable layers (see the Project properties section under: Projects to set which layers are identifiable) will be shown with the Identify tool.
• Open feature form, if a single feature is identified
• Define Search radius for identifying and displaying map tips as a percentage of the map width
• Define Ellipsoid for distance calculations
• Define Rubberband color for measure tools
• Define Decimal places
• Keep base unit
• Define preferred measurement units (‘meters’ or ‘feet’)
• Define preferred angle units (‘Degrees’, ‘Radians’ or ‘Gon’)
• Define Mouse wheel action (‘Zoom’, ‘Zoom and recenter’, ‘Zoom to mouse cursor’, ‘Nothing’)
• Define Zoom factor for wheel mouse

Overlays Tab¶

• Define Placement algorithm for labels, symboly and diagrams (choose between ‘Central point’ (standard), ‘Chain’, ‘Popmusic tabu chain’, ‘Popmusic tabu’ and ‘Popmusic chain’)

Digitizing Tab¶

• Define Rubberband Line color and Line width
• Define Default snap mode (‘To vertex’, ‘To segment’, ‘To vertex and segment’)
• Define Default snapping tolerance in map units or pixel
• Define search radius for vertex edits in ‘map units’ or ‘pixel’
• Show markers only for selected features
• Define vertex Marker style (‘Cross’ (default), ‘Semi transparent circle’ or ‘None’) and vertex Marker size.
• Suppress attributes pop-up windows after each created feature
• Reuse last entered attribute values
• Validate geometries Editing complex lines/polygons with many nodes can end up with very slow rendering. This is because the default validation procedures in QGIS can use a lot of time. To speed up rendering it is possible to select GEOS geometry validation (starting from GEOS 3.3) or to switch it off. GEOS geometry validation is much faster, but the disadvantage is that only the first geometry problem will be reported.

The next 3 options refer to the ^{Offset Curve} tool in Advanced digitizing. Through the various settings, it is possible to influence the shape of the line offset. These options are possible from GEOS 3.3 .

• Join style for curve offset
• Quadrantsegments for curve offset
• Miter limit for curve offset

CRS Tab¶

The CRS tab is divided in two areas. The first area allows to define the default CRS for new projects.

• Select a CRS and Always start new projects with this CRS.
• Enable on the fly re-projection by default

The second area allows to define the action, when a new layer is created, or when a layer without CRS is loaded.

• Prompt for Coordinate Reference System (CRS)
• Use project Coordinate Reference System (CRS)
• Use default Coordinate Reference System (CRS) displayed below

Locale Tab¶

• Overwrite system locale and Locale to use instead
• Information about active system locale

Network Tab¶

Figure Network Tab:

Proxy-settings in QGIS

• Use proxy for web access and define ‘Host’, ‘Port’, ‘User’, and ‘Password’.
• Set the Proxy type according to your needs.
  • Default Proxy: Proxy is determined based on the application proxy set using
  • Socks5Proxy: Generic proxy for any kind of connection. Supports TCP, UDP, binding to a port (incoming connections) and authentication.
  • HttpProxy: Implemented using the “CONNECT” command, supports only outgoing TCP connections; supports authentication.
  • HttpCachingProxy: Implemented using normal HTTP commands, it is useful only in the context of HTTP requests
  • FtpCachingProxy: Implemented using an FTP proxy, it is useful only in the context of FTP requests
• Define Cache settings (path and size)
• Define WMS search address, default is http://geopole.org/wms/search?search=\%1\&type=rss
• Define Timeout for network requests (ms) - deeingebundenfault is 60000

Excluding some URLs can be added to the text box below the proxy-settings (see Figure_Network_Tab) by pressing the [Add] button. After that double-click into the just created URL-field and enter the URL you would like to exclude from using the proxy. Obviously the button [Remove] removes the selected entry.

If you need more detailed information about the different proxy-settings, please refer to the manual of the underlying QT-library-documentation at http://doc.trolltech.com/4.5/qnetworkproxy.html#ProxyType-enum.

You can modify the options according to your needs. Some of the changes may require a restart of QGIS before they will be effective.

• settings are saved in a texfile: $HOME/.config/QuantumGIS/qgis.conf
• you can find your settings in: $HOME/Library/Preferences/org.qgis.qgis.plist
• settings are stored in the registry under:

\HKEY\CURRENT_USER\Software\QuantumGIS\qgis