Understand ImageGlass config files

Phap Duong
2 min readMar 30, 2020

ImageGlass 7.5 comes with the new Settings engine which provides lots of new features and improvements for both end-users and admins. If you are not familiar with ImageGlass configurations, you can see at the official documentation site. I am going to share you more details and how you can speed up your daily tasks with it.

Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash

Config files

As you know, there are 3 different config files, which are loaded in the order:

  • igconfig.default.xml, located in Startup dir, specifies the defaults which are used if no other settings are available at first start.
  • igconfig.xml, located in Config dir, contains all user settings, written by ImageGlass after closing. This overrules the settings in the igconfig.default.xml file.
  • igconfig.admin.xml, located in Startup dir, contains the settings which will overrule all settings in the files above.
ImageGlass config files

ImageGlass will look for every mentioned file, in the described order, and the locations. The configuration is built from zero, setting for setting, by using the following 4 steps:

  1. Take the default set by the developer.
  2. If a igconfig.default.xml was found, and the settings can be found in there, it will override the values from step 1.
  3. If a igconfig.xml was found, and the setting can be found in there, it will override the values from step 2.
  4. If a igconfig.admin.xml was found, and the setting can be found in there, it will override the values from step 3.

ImageGlass will use the resulting setting, and when every single setting in the complete configuration is processed, it will write the complete configuration to it’s igconfig.xml file (and only there).

Admin user

If you are admin of a network, and want to install ImageGlass with some default settings, and disable some as well, you can now do it easily with this new Settings engine.

  • Set your default configs in igconfig.default.xml file, and the configs that you don’t want the user to change it in igconfig.admin.xml file,
  • Deploy both files to startup folder of ImageGlass where the ImageGlass.exe is located.

End user

To end user, it’s easy for you to lock a setting using admin config file. Some examples:

  • If you always want to open ImageGlass in maximized window, you can set it in igconfig.admin.xml file:
    <Item key="FrmMainWindowState" value="Maximized" />

You can find all the setting keys in igconfig.xml file.

I have started developing the next version of ImageGlass. One of the most-requested features is Cropping tool will be available soon.

Follow me @duongdieuphap, and stay tuned!

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