QGIS Configuration¶

General Menu¶

Application

• Select the Style (QGIS restart required) and choose between ‘Oxygen’,’Windows’,’Motif’,’CDE’, ‘Plastique’ and ‘Cleanlooks’ ().
• Define the Icon theme . Currently only ‘default’ is possible.
• Define the Icon size .
• Define the Font. Choose between Qt default and a user-defined font.
• Change the Timeout for timed messages or dialogs .
• Hide splash screen at startup
• Show tips at startup
• Bold group box titles
• QGIS-styled group boxes
• Use native color chooser dialogs
• Use live-updating color chooser dialogs
• Custom side bar style
• Experimental canvas rotation support (restart required)

Project files

• Open project on launch (choose between ‘New’, ‘Most recent’ and ‘Specific’). When choosing ‘Specific’ use the to define a project.
• Create new project from default project. You have the possibility to press on Set current project as default or on Reset default. You can browse through your files and define a directory where you find your user-defined project templates. This will be added to Project ‣ New From Template. If you first activate Create new project from default project and then save a project in the project templates folder.
• Prompt to save project and data source changes when required
• Prompt for confirmation when a layer is to be removed
• Warn when opening a project file saved with an older version of QGIS
• Enable macros . This option was created to handle macros that are written to perform an action on project events. You can choose between ‘Never’, ‘Ask’, ‘For this session only’ and ‘Always (not recommended)’.

System Menu¶

Environment

System environment variables can now be viewed, and many configured, in the Environment group (see figure_environment_variables). This is useful for platforms, such as Mac, where a GUI application does not necessarily inherit the user’s shell environment. It’s also useful for setting and viewing environment variables for the external tool sets controlled by the Processing toolbox (e.g., SAGA, GRASS), and for turning on debugging output for specific sections of the source code.

• Use custom variables (restart required - include separators). You can [Add] and [Remove] variables. Already-defined environment variables are displayed in Current environment variables, and it’s possible to filter them by activating Show only QGIS-specific variables.

Figure System Environment:

System environment variables in QGIS

Plugin paths

[Add] or [Remove] Path(s) to search for additional C++ plugin libraries

Data Sources Menu¶

Feature attributes and table

• Open attribute table in a dock window (QGIS restart required)
• Copy geometry in WKT representation from attribute table. When using ^{Copy selected rows to clipboard} from the Attribute table dialog, this has the result that the coordinates of points or vertices are also copied to the clipboard.
• Attribute table behavior . There are three possibilities: ‘Show all features’, ‘Show selected features’ and ‘Show features visible on map’.
• Attribute table row cache . This row cache makes it possible to save the last loaded N attribute rows so that working with the attribute table will be quicker. The cache will be deleted when closing the attribute table.
• Representation for NULL values. Here, you can define a value for data fields containing a NULL value.

Data source handling

• Scan for valid items in the browser dock . You can choose between ‘Check extension’ and ‘Check file contents’.
• Scan for contents of compressed files (.zip) in browser dock . ‘No’, ‘Basic scan’ and ‘Full scan’ are possible.
• Prompt for raster sublayers when opening. 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 allows you 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
• Ignore shapefile encoding declaration. If a shapefile has encoding information, this will be ignored by QGIS.
• Add PostGIS layers with double click and select in extended mode
• Add Oracle layers with double click and select in extended mode
• Execute expressions on server-side if possible
• create transaction groups automatically whenever possible (Experimental). When this mode is turned on, all (postgres) layers from the same database are synchronised in their edit state, i.e. when one layer is put into edit state, all are, when one layer is committed or one layer is rolled back, so are the others. Also, instead of buffering edit changes locally, they are directly sent to a transaction in the database which gets committed when the user clicks save layer.

Hidden Browser Path

This widget lists all the folder you chose to hide from the Browser panel. Removing a folder from the list will make it available in the Browser panel.

Rendering Menu¶

Rendering behavior

• By default new layers added to the map should be displayed
• Use render caching where possible to speed up redraws
• Render layers in parallel using many CPU cores
• Max cores to use
• Map update interval (default to 250 ms)
• Enable feature simplification by default for newly added layers
• Simplification threshold
• Simplify on provider side if possible
• Maximum scale at which the layer should be simplified

Rendering quality

• Make lines appear less jagged at the expense of some drawing performance

Rasters

• With RGB band selection, you can define the number for the Red, Green and Blue band.

Contrast enhancement

• Single band gray . A single band gray can have ‘No stretch’, ‘Stretch to MinMax’, ‘Stretch and Clip to MinMax’ and also ‘Clip to MinMax’.
• Multi band color (byte/band) . Options are ‘No stretch’, ‘Stretch to MinMax’, ‘Stretch and Clip to MinMax’ and ‘Clip to MinMax’.
• Multi band color (>byte/band) . Options are ‘No stretch’, ‘Stretch to MinMax’, ‘Stretch and Clip to MinMax’ and ‘Clip to MinMax’.
• Limits (minimum/maximum) . Options are ‘Cumulative pixel count cut’, ‘Minimum/Maximum’, ‘Mean +/- standard deviation’.
• Cumulative pixel count cut limits
• Standard deviation multiplier

Debugging

• Map canvas refresh

Colors Menu¶

This menu allows you to add some custom color that you can find in each color dialog window of the renderers. You will see a set of predefined colors in the tab: you can delete or edit all of them. Moreover you can add the color you want and perform some copy and paste operations. Finally you can export the color set as a gpl file or import them.

Canvas and Legend Menu¶

Default map appearance (overridden by project properties)

• Define a Selection color and a Background color.

Layer legend

• Double click action in legend . You can either ‘Open layer properties’ or ‘Open attribute table’ with the double click.
• The following Legend item styles are possible:
  • Capitalise layer names
  • Bold layer names
  • Bold group names
  • Display classification attribute names
  • Create raster icons (may be slow)

Map tools Menu¶

This menu offers some options regarding the behavior of the Identify tool.

• Search radius for identifying and displaying map tips is a tolerance factor expressed as a percentage of the map width. This means the identify tool will depict results as long as you click within this tolerance.
• Highlight color allows you to choose with which color should features being identified are to be highlighted.
• Buffer determines a buffer distance to be rendered from the outline of the identify highlight.
• Minimum width determines how thick should the outline of a highlighted object be.

Measure tool

• Define Rubberband color for measure tools
• Define Decimal places
• Keep base unit to not automatically convert large numbers (e.g., meters to kilometers)
• Preferred distance units (‘Meters’, ‘Feet’, ‘Nautical Miles’, ‘Degrees’ or ‘Map Units’ )
• Preferred area units (‘Square meters’, ‘Square feet’, ‘Square yards’, ‘Hectares’, ‘Map Units’ ...)
• Preferred angle units (‘Degrees’, ‘Radians’, ‘Gon/gradians’, ‘Minutes of arc’ ...)

Panning and zooming

• Define Mouse wheel action (‘Zoom’, ‘Zoom and recenter’, ‘Zoom to mouse cursor’, ‘Nothing’)
• Define Zoom factor for wheel mouse

Predefined scales

Here, you find a list of predefined scales. With the and buttons you can add or remove your personal scales. You can also import or export scales from/to a .XML file. Note that you still have the possibility to remove your changes and reset to the predefined list.

Composer Menu¶

Composition defaults

You can define the Default font here.

Grid appearance

• Define the Grid style (‘Solid’, ‘Dots’, ‘Crosses’)
• Define the Grid color

Grid and guide defaults

• Define the Grid spacing
• Define the Grid offset for x and y
• Define the Snap tolerance

Digitizing Menu¶

Feature creation

• Suppress attributes pop-up windows after each created feature
• Reuse last entered attribute values
• Validate geometries. Editing complex lines and polygons with many nodes can result in very slow rendering. This is because the default validation procedures in QGIS can take 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.

Rubberband

• Define Rubberband Line width and Line color

Snapping

• Open snapping options in a dock window (QGIS restart required)
• Define Default snap mode (‘To vertex’, ‘To segment’, ‘To vertex and segment’, ‘Off’)
• Define Default snapping tolerance in map units or pixels
• Define the Search radius for vertex edits in map units or pixels

Vertex markers

• Show markers only for selected features
• Define vertex Marker style (‘Cross’ (default), ‘Semi transparent circle’ or ‘None’)
• Define vertex Marker size

Curve offset tool

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 starting from GEOS 3.3.

• Join style
• Quadrant segments
• Miter limit

GDAL Menu¶

GDAL is a data exchange library for raster files. In this tab, you can Edit create options and Edit Pyramids Options of the raster formats. Define which GDAL driver is to be used for a raster format, as in some cases more than one GDAL driver is available.

CRS Menu¶

Default CRS for new projects

• Don’t enable ‘on the fly’ reprojection
• Automatically enable ‘on the fly’ reprojection if layers have different CRS
• Enable ‘on the fly’ reprojection by default
• Select a CRS and Always start new projects with this CRS

CRS for new layers

This area allows you to define the action to take when a new layer is created, or when a layer without a CRS is loaded.

• Prompt for CRS
• Use project CRS
• Use default CRS

Default datum transformations

• Ask for datum transformation when no default is defined
• If you have worked with the ‘on-the-fly’ CRS transformation you can see the result of the transformation in the window below. You can find information about ‘Source CRS’ and ‘Destination CRS’ as well as ‘Source datum transform’ and ‘Destination datum transform’.

Locale Menu¶

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

Authentication¶

In the Authentication tab you can set authentication configurations and manage PKI certificates. See Authentication System for more details.

Network Menu¶

General

• Define WMS search address, default is http://geopole.org/wms/search?search=\%1\&type=rss
• Define Timeout for network requests (ms) - default is 60000
• Define Default expiration period for WMSC/WMTS tiles (hours) - default is 24
• Define Max retry in case of tile request errors
• Define User-Agent

Figure Network Tab:

Proxy-settings in QGIS

Cache settings

Define the Directory and a Size for the cache.

• 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.

Excluding some URLs can be added to the text box below the proxy settings (see Figure_Network_Tab).

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 text file: $HOME/.config/QGIS/QGIS2.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\QGIS\qgis