context is that it’s a folder on Windows that isn’t shown by default so you have to open the “run” menu then type it in. Like a cheatcode for a computer.
or at least that’s how it felt the first time I found it when I was like 12 trying to find my Minecraft screenshots
He’s in Australia! No wait, Japan! No wait Germany! This guy is good. /S
%temp% is my fav. Just delete everything in it that windoze will allow. One thing windows and windows programs never do well is clean up temp files. It’s always satisfying/annoying to delete several GB temp files.
You can also insert it into windows explorer path
It’s just a regular hidden folder…
Which you can reach with a %-based shortcut!
To regular users, it is like magic.
I find the whole convention of denoting variables with
foo%weird. Like, delimit it at both ends?$foois much more elegant and the character looks less weirdWindows also has a language that denotes variables with the dollar as well (powershell). Or you can use bash too
It makes sense if you want to concatenate strings, which is probably pretty much what happens when you type that into the path input.
This way, you could create a string like “D:/%appdata%/local/minecraft” Whereas without the trailing %, you would need a space to separate it from the text, which would result in “D:/Users/Public/AppData /local/minecraft”.
(i havent used windows in a while and those paths are from memory, they might be wrong)
Ok, that actually makes sense tbf
I do remember from waaay back in the day using the same syntax in DOS batch files. Shit’s probably just been carried over since then.
Technically
$fooalso delimits at both ends, the second character is just a newline or whitespace character. However withfoo%it is unambiguous where the variable begins and ends.Also I said newline or whitespace, what about special characters?
Look at
$foo+$baram I adding two variables together? Is the first variable$fooor$foo+?i’m yet to see any language that has variables and ‘+’ operator, while accepting also ‘+’ in variable names at the same time. Same goes for basically every operator
Didn’t JS do it? Or was it Lua? I don’5 remember but i am sure i saw a language that did some shit like that…
i won’t put it behind js, but no, i haven’t heard of anything like that
context is that it’s a folder on Windows that isn’t shown by default so you have to open the “run” menu then type it in. Like a cheatcode for a computer.
First thing I have done since… Forever, basically, when installing Windows is to have it show me hidden files and folders in Explorer.
FYI: You also don’t need to use Run to get there. You could just type %appdata% into the address bar in Explorer. Unless that’s also now hidden by default… 🤔 I am still using Windows 10 and have zero experience with 11.
Or turn on “Show hidden files” in Explorer settings and just go to that folder, since it’s just a hidden folder in the user directory
I do this as well. Also i normally just go to the location then hit the bar and type in appdata at the end to proceed. Same with programdata.
Eleven is one better than ten.
So it’s better at sucking by 1?
The enshittification has been turned up to eleven.
And here I am, on Linux, with a custom-defined shortcut key to toggle showing hidden files…
Cause you need to switch between seeing and not seeing them every day?
What a useless shortcut thb.
Don’t wanna scroll past 17
.foodirectories in/home/zarobibefore seeing any actual folders lol. I’ve had to mess around with hidden directories like once a month maxSorting them to the end might be a good option?
.is sorted earlier than most other characters in my GUI unfortunately. I wouldn’t enjoy a reverse alphabetical ordering either. I don’t really see a problem with turning on/off hidden files as neededI see. Mine (dolphin) has a check in the sorting to sort hidden last.
Bro isn’t it just an environment variable?
An envirbroment variable. Teehee!
Can we get the context of the image as well? I wave many questions.
It’s slop
I really don’t think so.
It’s slop for sure. I can find any source of this and despite looking like the 80s or early 90s, it only recently showed up on the internet. It is for sure not any real military hardware, as the layout makes no sense and the controls are very strange. Given the clearly improvised computer armor plate on the front of the dude, it might be a photo from a movie set? But no movie I could find relates to this image, not even similar ones. There’s also the resolution that’s very low, I searched for the original unedited version and that’s low res as well. A clear indicator of it being AI generated. There’s also weird artifacts all over the place, which might be intentional design, but there are so many weird things it probably due to it being slop. On the other hand, if this really was a scan of an old photo or a still out of a movie, none of the artifacts that would cause are visible. This might be because of the low resolution, but I’d guess it’s because it’s slop.
I remember this being from one of the OpenAI Sora video model demonstrations.
I guess we could always ask @sgt.swampass 🫡
On one end you have Microsoft, who wants applications to use the AppData folder to store…well… application data (configuration files, for example). Applications shouldn’t use the My Documents folder to store files not created directly by the user. This is all fine. On the other end, the AppData folder is hidden and you can’t expect Windows users to know how to see hidden folders. And that’s the reason why many applications, games in particular, pollute the My Documents folder.
Bonus question: do you know the difference between %AppData% and %LocalAppData%?
The reason many games “pollute” the My Documents folder is that in the past, that was also where Microsoft designated the My Games and Saved Games folders. Minecraft was the first game I ever saw that actually put things in the appdata folders. And I still think it’s weird that the entire game gets installed there, and not Program Files.
I hate it because my OS is on one drive and my games are on another, larger drive.
Some games, when you download custom maps, download them to the app data folder, which bloats my OS drive instead of filling up the drive intended for games.
You could just symlink the directory to one on the other drive, problem solved. I probably wouldn’t symlink the whole AppData directory, that might break things, but just that specific games directory.
I’m pretty sure windows lets you make filesystem links. So you’d link your app data folder to actually point to a folder on your game drive
I’d symlink only a specific game folder than the whole appdata
… one is … further away?
One public and one for thr current user?
Not quite!
Suppose you have an account in a library or university or something like that where you can log-in to whatever machine and still have all of your files and installed applications.
In such a situation %appdata% is the same on all machines. Basically when you log into a machine the %appdata% folder is mounted from the network (the usual directories such as My Documents are mounted the same way).
The %LocalAppData% is never shared, instead, and is specific of that machine. If you login again in the same machine, your files are still there, but if you use another pc you get another folder.
That can be used to have machine-specific configuration files (in LocalAppData) and user-specific configuration files (in AppData).
Windows is weirder than it looks like on the surface!
It’s also worth noting that nearly nobody uses %appdata% that way anymore. It’s not even synced by default with enterprise OneDrive. And roaming documents folders need specific setup by your admin as well. Most don’t because it complicates shit. They’ll usually just give each user a dedicated private folder on a network drive and mount that at login, or they’ll be even lazier and use OneDrive to sync across devices without all the network drive hoops.
Also some programs, including some Microsoft developed ones, will install into %appdata% to bypass the need to have local admin rights to install for all users. On one hand it’s handy. On the other it makes blocking users from installing shit more of a pain. On the third hand it makes it real annoying to manage drive space when every goddamn user gets a separate Teams install by default.
I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with all of this if:
A: It was information provided clearly to the user, including after install and
B: There was a publicly and clearly standardized process for how the user should be expected to interact with those files.
Sometimes games will hide screenshots and export data there where others will lose their shit if everything isn’t very carefully handled. Mod folders, user music, save files, screenshots, controller configs… These are things that are now in tens of thousands of games and everyone can just sort of choose whatever they’re in the mood for and no one bats an eye.
It would just be nice if you didn’t have to go investigating on PCGamingWiki just to check for basic info.
some programs, including some Microsoft developed ones, will install into %appdata% to bypass the need to have local admin rights to install for all users. On one hand it’s handy. On the other it makes blocking users from installing shit more of a pain
Well on windows you can install shit anywhere, I don’t know if there is something similar to linux’s noexec (but that is handled at mount point level). In the old days I used to have a usb drive with “portable” versions of the applications that I wanted to use at school. (We weren’t obviously allowed to install anything, but you could run anything)
Anyways, security is hard, windows is confusing 👍
Me setting up a shortcut to the folder so I can access DDLC mod save files easier while I was still on Windows:
