Moving Unreal Projects and Engine to New Folder

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hey Guys

For those who would like to move the Unreal Content (ie. Subway, Effects Cave, etc.) or the Engine to a new location and would like the Launcher to recognize the changed location, just do the following:

  1. Close the launcher and move the Content from “C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents\Unreal Projects” to your new location, eg. “D:\My Unreal Projects” if you haven’t done so already.
  2. Navigate to “C:\ProgramData\Epic\UnrealEngineLauncher\Data\Manifests”.
  3. In that folder you’ll see a couple of .manifest files. Each of these files represent an Unreal Project. The file “40003.manifest” is the Engine (4.0.2). Create a backup copy of the files just in case.
  4. Open this file with a text editor (Notepad++, Wordpad, etc.)
  5. Scroll right to the end of the file and you’ll notice something like " “InstallLocation”:“C:/Users/YourUserName/Documents/Unreal Projects/StrategyGame”,“IsExecutable”:“false”,“FullAppName”:“StrategyGame_4.0: Production-Windows”}} "
  6. Just change the “InstallLocation” from “C:/Users/YourUserName/Documents/Unreal Projects/StrategyGame” to “D:/Unreal Projects/StrategyGame”
  7. Please take not of the slashes “/” !!
  8. Save the file and do the same for any of the other you want to move.
  9. Open your launcher and you’ll see the content is there ready to open and no longer shows repair.

For those who would like to download to a different Directory.

  1. In the laucher select the project you would like to download and start the download process.
  2. As soon as it’s starts to download press the pause button.
  3. Close the launcher.
  4. Navigate to “C:\Program Files\Unreal Engine\Launcher\PatchStaging” and delete the folder of the project you are current downloading.
  5. Edit the manifest file as above.
  6. Open the launcher and press the repair button on the project.

It will now download to the new location.

This is a temporary Hack as the guys at Epic said they are working on a solution for this, but in the meantime use we can use this.

1 Like
2

Thank you very much! This (editing the manifest files) worked for me!

After moving the “My Documents” directory to another disk, new content downloaded in the UE Launcher went to that new location. I was just looking for a way to correct the path to the downloads from before I moved that directory. This did the trick, my SSD is happy again now.

3

Glad to know. I also have a small SSD, that’s why I had to figure something like this out.

4

Hahaha, ok, so now the download part is redundant !! The new launcher solves this issue.

5

This doesn’t seem to work anymore. When opening the launcher, syncing overwrites the .manifest files.

Any other solutions to this problem? I’ve got no room on my C: drive for Unreal content.

6

Sounds like this would work for sneakernet, yeah? Downloading it at a friend’s and then copying the files to my computer at home? Or it would work if it was working with 4.1?

7

You sure you are looking at the correct folder and editing the correct files ?

It’s still working for me. My manifest files are at " C:\ProgramData\Epic\UnrealEngineLauncher\Data\Manifests " and the 4.1 files start with “104****.manifest” , the 4.0.2 file are “40***.manifest”

EDIT: Are you referring to Downloading new content or moving existing content ?

8

I really don’t know why people are hacking at the manifest files, all you have to do is create a directory junction, which is explained in some detail here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/278262-mklink-create-use-links-windows.html

9

Those are exactly the same files I am looking at. I make the necessary changes but each time the launcher is opened, both the “104****.manifest” files and their untouched backup copies are erased and overwritten with new versions. Seems like it’s doing a verification of the Launcher data and “repairing” the “damaged” files. I’m using 4.1 on Windows 7.

It doesn’t matter if I download or move the content. The next time I open the launcher it changes it back to the default settings and demands that I repair the content.

Thanks for this alternate solution. I’ll consider trying this after I do a little more research.

Needless to say, I hope the Unreal Dev Team puts in the time to allow us to change installation directories because this is a real roadblock to development.

10

YA know it’s now 2016 and we still can’t choose where to download stuff…

11

Yep you just need to use a directory junction…I wrote a tutorial for this: A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums

12

Does the procedure in the first post still work for 4.13.1 or is it better to create a directory junction?