My OperaRemoving Opera Preferences
Sunday, March 13, 2011 1:42:41 PM
Quite a while back I wrote a blog post about uninstalling Opera. The reason I wrote it was specifically because the install.sh script included with our old Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris tar packages did not provide any method of uninstalling. This has been remedied for some time now but checking the traffic to my blog it seems that this post is still frequently read. Looking at the http referer (sic) information from the access logs I often see that people land on this page having tried to search on Google for how to delete or reset Opera's preferences. Even today for example a user searched for "Opera doesn't uninstall preferences" and landed on my post.
I suspect that the reason that this old post turns up in their search results is that near the end I also mentioned how to delete the Opera preferences. Though given the nature of the post I only explain how to do this on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris.
Anyway, given the number of miss hits I seem to be getting I might as well say how to remove Opera preferences on all platforms. After all doing so can be useful. Often bugs or problems that people hit are related to specific preference settings and starting from scratch often quickly remedies such issues.
I suspect that the reason that this old post turns up in their search results is that near the end I also mentioned how to delete the Opera preferences. Though given the nature of the post I only explain how to do this on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris.
Anyway, given the number of miss hits I seem to be getting I might as well say how to remove Opera preferences on all platforms. After all doing so can be useful. Often bugs or problems that people hit are related to specific preference settings and starting from scratch often quickly remedies such issues.
So where does Opera store its preferences? Look at opera:about (also accessible via the help Menu) and check out the "Paths" section, specifically the "Preferences", "Saved session", "Bookmarks", "Opera directory", "Cache", "Help documents" and "Mail directory" sub sections. These are your Opera preferences. Mine for example look like this:
As you can see on Linux (and FreeBSD) they are all stored under one directory. In my case "/home/ruario/.opera". Hence if I wanted to delete my preferences and reset them to the defaults it is as simple as deleting this directory and all its contents (Opera shouldn't be running when I do this). On Windows and Mac the files aren't always contained within a single directory but the same "Paths" section of opera:about would tell you where to find everything.
One piece of advice however if you are planning on resetting your preferences, consider backing them up or perhaps selectively saving certain key files as it can be quite a hassle to recreate all your favourite, bookmarks, speed dials, passwords, etc. If you want more information on which files are responsible for each aspect of the preferences read Backing up Opera.
P.S. Windows users might be interested to know that from Opera 11.10 onwards, when uninstalling you now have an option to automatically remove your preferences.
michalmisiu # Sunday, March 13, 2011 3:07:19 PM
Ruarí Ødegaardruario # Sunday, March 13, 2011 3:10:21 PM
Still it is hand to know how to do a full reset.
Mağruf ÇolakoğluZAHEK # Sunday, March 13, 2011 9:29:08 PM
Unregistered user # Tuesday, December 20, 2011 4:01:06 PM