Which setting controls how long JetBrains Local History keeps revisions?

Question

Goal
The goal is to determine a reliable method for configuring the retention period of JetBrains Local History revisions so that critical changes are preserved long enough for recovery.
Context
Local History automatically records file revisions on each save, IDE rebuild, or VCS operation. The IDE allows revisiting past states via a diff view, but the documentation does not expose a clear UI element or documented setting for the maximum age of stored revisions.
Uncertainty
Because the retention policy is not explicitly documented, users cannot confidently decide how many days or how much disk space to allocate for Local History. This uncertainty may lead to premature deletion of useful revisions or unnecessary disk consumption.
Questions

Which configuration option or file controls the maximum retention period for Local History entries in JetBrains IDEs?
Is there a way to view the current retention setting within the IDE’s UI or via a command‑line flag?
Does the retention policy apply uniformly across all project files, or can it be scoped per project or file type?

Tasadduq Burney · Answer

The Retention Setting
The retention period for JetBrains Local History is controlled by the idea.local.history.days property. This setting is not exposed in the standard Settings or Preferences UI and must be configured via the IDE's custom properties file.

Configuration Steps
To change the number of days the IDE preserves local revisions, follow these steps:

Navigate to the top menu and select Help > Edit Custom Properties....
If prompted to create the file, click Yes.
Add the following line to the file, replacing X with your desired number of days: idea.local.history.days=X
Save the file and restart the IDE for the changes to take effect.

Technical Behavior and Assumptions
Based on standard IDE behavior, the following assumptions apply to this configuration:

Default Value: The default retention period is typically 5 days.
Scope: This setting is global for the IDE instance. It cannot be scoped to specific projects, file types, or individual files.
Storage: Local History is stored in the IDE's system folder. Increasing the retention period will increase disk space consumption proportional to the volume of changes made across all projects.

Verification
To verify the setting is active, modify a file, restart the IDE, and right-click the file to select Local History > Show History. While the IDE does not provide a "Current Setting" readout, you can verify that revisions older than the previous default (5 days) are preserved after the change.

Diagnostic Detail: Please specify if you are using a shared configuration profile or a remote development environment (e.g., JetBrains Gateway), as custom properties may need to be applied to the host backend rather than the client.

Which setting controls how long JetBrains Local History keeps revisions?

Goal

Context

Uncertainty

Questions

1 answer

The Retention Setting

Configuration Steps

Technical Behavior and Assumptions

Verification

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