Saving different settings as templates

[Andreas Vossinakis]

I want to have different environments in stellarium, eg one without constellation lines in orthographic projection with no names, and another with constellation lines visible, comets visible and other things.

Is it possible to somehow save every different environment as a template for quick change without having to change every setting everytime??

[Georg Zotti]

There is no "load preferences..." built-in.

You can rename config.ini to some other name and launch dedicated "other-settings sessions" via command-line option --config-file mySpecialConfig.ini

You can write a script for each configuration set (scenario) that sets everything relevant. 

Or you take a few minutes to learn the hotkeys for the most relevant settings, or configure what you need as hotkeys. 

[Paul Gilmartin]

On 9/18/25 07:16, Georg Zotti wrote:
> There is no "load preferences..." built-in.
> You can rename config.ini to some other name

...
I'll advise "copy" rather than "rename".

If you have two config.ini which is partly what you want,
you can use whatever compare tool your desktop provides,
then *cautiously* use a text editor to make a third version
merging those changes. The English tags in config.ini
are somewhat self-evident.

if available, diff3 can automate that process:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff3>
and launch dedicated "other-settings sessions" via command-line option --config-file mySpecialConfig.ini ...

> You can write a script for each configuration set (scenario) that sets everything relevant.
>

I need to learn scripting.

> Or you take a few minutes to learn the hotkeys for the most relevant settings, or configure what you need as hotkeys.
>
> andreas.v...@gmail.com schrieb am Donnerstag, 18. September 2025 um 15:10:46 UTC+2:
>

> I want to have different environments in stellarium, eg one without constellation lines in orthographic projection with no names, and another with constellation line ...


--
gil

[Alexander Duytschaever]

If you can program in Bash, here is some food for ideas.

I created a KUbuntu desktop script that launches a Bash script to select a custom bookmark file. (Note that bookmarks have been superseded by the observing lists concept).

#!/usr/bin/env bash

VERSION=alex
PGM=/home/alex/projects/stellarium/
cd $PGM/buildscripts

SCRIPT=./alex-bookmarks.bash
konsole --profile stellarium -e bash -c $SCRIPT

This then calls a simple Bash (alex-bookmarks.bash) script that gives a list of bookmark files in a specific folder; I think you could also use this mechanism to select e.g. config folders.

The magic happens in the Bash `select BM in `, where the console halts and the user has to select a number in a list; after that , the selected environment is activated (link redirected).

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# select a bookmark file before starting Stellarium

#set -x

VERSION=alex
PGM=/home/alex/projects/stellarium/
cd $PGM
CONF=$PWD/configs/$VERSION

BOOKMARK_FOLDER=$PGM/local-data/bookmarks

pushd $BOOKMARK_FOLDER
BOOKMARKS=`ls`
popd

ls -l  $CONF/data/bookmarks.json

select BM in $BOOKMARKS ;
do
BOOKMARK_FILE=$BM
ln -sf $BOOKMARK_FOLDER/$BM $CONF/data/bookmarks.json
./builds/$VERSION/bin/stellarium --user-dir $CONF
done

Subsequent Stellarium runs don't really need to re-run this script until the desired bookmark file has to be changed.

rgds

-alex-