How to Update Cura Without Losing Your Settings? (Solved)

Out of all the components that make up the 3D printing process, which are the software, the electrical hardware, and the mechanical hardware, we can consider the software side to usually be more accommodating, primarily due to the fact that they are designed with the end-user in mind.

On the other hand, even though the software-related parts of 3D printing are usually a lot more user-friendly than dealing with the electronic or mechanical sides, user-friendliness does not particularly mean that it’s not possible to experience issues with the software that can lead to pretty undesirable results, making it vital to be cautious regardless.

In today’s article, we will be talking about the process of updating Cura without losing any of your custom settings, which will allow you to always keep your Cura version up-to-date without having to worry about a potential loss of data as a result of it, and enjoy the new features that come with the latest versions.

So, how can you update Cura to the newest version without losing your customized settings?

To update Cura to the newest version without losing your settings, you will need to pay close attention to the dialogs that pop up when you run the Cura installer and click the No button when the installer asks you if you would like to remove all of your configuration files during the uninstallation of the older version.

Next up, we will take a closer look at ways of updating Cura without losing your settings, find out whether updating Cura causes your profiles to be removed, and finally, go through the process of backing up and restoring Cura profiles and settings to ensure that they are never lost in an update scenario.

How to Update Cura Without Losing Your Settings?

As optimally configuring the settings of your slicer is usually a long and arduous journey that takes a lot of time and effort spent on trial and error to get everything correct, losing them after an update would be nothing short of catastrophic.

When you run a Cura installer file that belongs to an updated version, the first question you will encounter is whether the installer should delete the older version of Cura or not, and in the case that you decide to keep the older version, the new version of Cura will install as usual, with your settings intact.

On the other hand, if you decide to uninstall the older version, the Cura uninstaller will pop up, and upon continuing with the uninstallation process, a dialog that asks whether the uninstaller should also remove your custom settings together with Cura will appear.

At this point, to uninstall the older version of Cura and install the new version without losing your settings, you will have to click the No button, which will prompt the uninstaller to uninstall Cura itself, but leave your settings intact.

As clicking the Yes button at this point will cause the Cura uninstaller to delete your settings irrecoverably (unless you have backups or other means to recover deleted files on your disk), it’s vital to be vigilant and read the text on each dialog before clicking one of the options.

Does Updating Cura Remove the Profiles?

Another part of slicer configuration that often requires a significant time investment is the custom print profiles you can create, and just like the settings, their loss in a scenario such as an update would also be unacceptable.

While updating Cura itself won’t remove your profiles, clicking the Yes button for the prompt that asks you whether Cura should remove your configuration, which appears if you chose to delete the older version of Cura while updating, will delete your profiles alongside any other configuration.

To protect your profiles against any oversights that can take place during the updating process, we highly recommend creating backups prior to the update, which would bail you out from the widespread scenario of mistakenly clicking the Yes button for the custom configuration to be deleted.

How to Backup and Restore Cura Settings and Profiles?

Fortunately, there are a few straightforward ways to backup and restore your Cura settings and profiles without a lot of effort, which will ensure that you will never have a problem with the loss of any of them in the case of an update or a failure of data due to other reasons.

The primary way to backup your Cura settings and profiles is to use the Cura Backups extension that comes pre-installed with Cura, which saves your settings and profiles to Ultimaker’s cloud servers, allowing you to access them from anywhere considering that you are logged into your Ultimaker account.

Below is a step-by-step guide you can follow to backup your Cura settings and profiles with Cura Backups:

  1. Click the Extensions option on the top menu.
  2. Hover over the Cura Backups option in the dropdown, and click Manage Backups.
  3. If prompted with the Ultimaker sign-in screen, sign in with your Ultimaker account; else, ignore this step.
  4. Click the Backup Now button, and wait until Cura uploads your backup to the cloud.

To restore the backups you have made with Cura Backups, follow the above procedure up to step 3, and then click the Restore button next to the backup entry you would like to use for restoration instead of the Backup Now button.

On the other hand, if you would like to make local backups that you can keep anywhere of your choice, which does offer slightly more flexibility, you will manually need to copy the Cura user data folder, which you can do so by following the steps below:

  1. Navigate to the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming folder on your computer. You can input “%appdata%” into the address bar of Windows Explorer to get there quickly.
  2. Locate the “cura” folder.
  3. Copy (or upload) the “cura” folder to the location you would like to back it up to, such as a flash drive or Dropbox.

Finally, to restore the manual backups, all you need to do is to copy the folder that you have backed up to the same path you have copied it from and restart Cura if you already have it open, which should load with all of your backed-up settings.

Please note that the file path mentioned above is for Windows, and if you use a different operating system, the folder will be located elsewhere.

Wrapping Up

While staying up-to-date with the version of your slicer is vital to have the best experience possible, ensuring that you don’t lose any of your custom data in the process is just as critical, especially if you have spent a lot of time on configuration. 

To quickly recap, to avoid losing your settings while updating Cura, you will either need to click No when the installer asks you if you would like to remove the older version of Cura or when the installer asks you if you would like to remove the custom configuration, which will only happen if you chose to remove the older version.

On the other hand, regardless of updates, we highly recommend creating backups of your Cura settings and profiles, as a data loss can happen at any time due to various reasons, and a backup would allow you to restore everything in a matter of seconds.

Happy printing!