Configuration

QuPath’s launcher is controlled by a configuration file generated by jpackage. It exists somewhere within the installation (probably the app subdirectory) and has a name like QuPath.cfg.

The .cfg file provides a way to modify some aspects of QuPath’s behavior via the [JavaOptions] section. The contents may change across QuPath versions, but the following gives an example:

[JavaOptions]
java-options=-Djpackage.app-version=0.3.0
java-options=-Djava.library.path=$APPDIR
java-options=--illegal-access=permit
java-options=-XX:MaxRAMPercentage=50

The most relevant JavaOptions you might want to change are described below.

Tip

These configuration options are also very useful when running QuPath from within an IDE.

Java parameters

System properties

These are specified with -Dproperty.name=value

General system properties

- jpackage.app-version

Application version. This should correspond to the QuPath version, but unfortunately it sometimes difference because of platform-specific rules, e.g. macOS forbidding the first number to be 0.

- java.library.path

Path in which Java will look for native libraries (e.g. OpenSlide).

You can change this if you need to make other native libraries available to QuPath extensions, e.g. to use $APPDIR:/path/to/somewhere/else/lib.

Note that on Windows the separator is ; rather than :.

- java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool.common.parallelism

Control the number of threads used in the common ForkJoinPool.

This determines the default parallelism of parallel streams. Because streams provide an easy way parallelize some operations, and they are used in several places within QuPath, this property can be useful if memory errors are seen because of too many threads relative to the amount of available memory.

QuPath-specific properties

- qupath.prefs.name

Specify the location for the QuPath preferences, as a node name (not a file path). This is useful if you want to have two separate QuPath instances installed with different preferences, or if you are developing a QuPath extension and don’t want to load extensions from another QuPath installation.

Example use: -Dqupath.prefs.name="qupath.eclipse/0.3