| title | Select installation locations | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| description | Reduce the installation footprint of Visual Studio by changing the location of the download cache, shared components, SDKs, and tools to different drives. | ||||
| ms.date | 12/06/2024 | ||||
| ms.custom | vs-acquisition | ||||
| ms.topic | how-to | ||||
| helpviewer_keywords |
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| author | anandmeg | ||||
| ms.author | meghaanand | ||||
| manager | mijacobs | ||||
| ms.subservice | installation |
::: moniker range=">=vs-2022"
You can reduce the installation footprint of Visual Studio on your system drive by changing the location of some of its files. Specifically, you can use a different location for the download cache and shared components, tools, and SDKs.
::: moniker-end
Note
There are some tools and SDKs that have different rules on where they can be installed. Such tools and SDKs are installed on your system drive even if you choose a different location.
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When you install Visual Studio, choose the Installation locations tab.
::: moniker range="visualstudio"
:::image type="content" source="media/visualstudio/vs-installer-installation-locations-tab.png" border="false" alt-text="Screenshot showing the Installation locations tab of the Visual Studio Installer." lightbox="media/visualstudio/vs-installer-installation-locations-tab.png":::
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range="vs-2022"
:::image type="content" source="media/vs-2022/vs-installer-installation-locations-tab.png" border="false" alt-text="Screenshot showing the Installation locations tab of the Visual Studio Installer." lightbox="media/vs-2022/vs-installer-installation-locations-tab.png":::
::: moniker-end
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In the Visual Studio IDE section, accept the default path. Visual Studio installs the core product, and includes files that are specific to this version of Visual Studio.
[!TIP] If your system drive is a solid-state drive (SSD), we recommend that you keep the core product on your system drive. When you develop with Visual Studio, you read from and write to a lot of files, which increases the disk I/O activity. It's best to choose your fastest drive to handle the load.
[!IMPORTANT] You can select a different location only when you first install Visual Studio. If you've already installed it and want to change the location, you must uninstall Visual Studio and then reinstall it.
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In the Download cache section, decide whether you want to keep the download cache, and if so, where you want to store its files.
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Select or unselect Keep download cache after the installation.
If you decide not to keep the download cache, the download cache location is only temporarily used. This action doesn't affect or delete files from previous installations.
For example, if you select the "Desktop development with C++" workload, the temporarily required size for the download cache location is 1.28 GB. As soon as the installation completes, downloaded cache files are removed, leaving only package metadata.
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Specify the folder path, including the drive, where you want to store the installation files and manifests from the download cache.
[!IMPORTANT] You can select a different location only when you first install Visual Studio. If you've already installed it and want to change the location, you must uninstall Visual Studio and then reinstall it.
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In the Shared components, tools, and SDKs section, select the folder where you want to store the files that are shared by side-by-side Visual Studio installations. SDKs and tools are also stored in this directory.
[!IMPORTANT] If you've installed Visual Studio on your computer before, you won't be able to change the Shared components, tools, and SDKs path and it appears greyed out.
[!INCLUDEinstall_get_support_md]