User Directory

This provides a brief overview of the Caster user directory. The main function of the user directory is to store Caster settings and user-made content.

Note for Dragon users: The Caster User directory is managed by Caster, and should not be confused with Natlink's UserDirectory, which is set to the Caster source code directory if using the Alternative Natlink Configuration.

User Directory Location

The default locations are:

  • Windows: C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\caster
  • Linux and MacOS: ~/.local/share/caster

Users can set the location of their Caster user directory using the environment variable CASTER_USER_DIR. For help on setting environment variables on your system, search for "setting environment variables <your OS>".

Layout Description

  • data - Caster stores the files that are not intended to be edited by the user in the data directory. Most files here are for self-modifying rules, such as Alias, and start with sm_.
  • caster_user_content\hooks - For user-made hooks (Empty by default).
  • caster_user_content\rules - For user-made rules and overrides of rules from Caster (Empty by default).
  • settings - All Caster settings files.
  • sikuli - For user-made Sikuli scripts (Empty by default).
  • caster_user_content\transformers - For simplified transformers i.e words.txt (Empty by default).

Backup Procedures

It's good to back up this directory as it contains user content. The backup scheme can be simple as a zip file, cloud-backup service (e.g. Dropbox), or even a private GitHub repository. The simplest solution for most users will be to use the environment variable CASTER_USER_DIR to place the user directory inside your cloud-backup folder. Note that on many Windows setups the full user directory is already backed up by default using OneDrive.

Another alternative is to use hard links to a folder in your cloud-backup folder. Hard links provide the ability to keep a single copy of a file yet have it appear in multiple directories. There is a helpful utility that makes these hard links easy to use on Windows OS. See Hard Link Shell Extension.