# About Your &kde; Account

&kde; stores information about your personal settings in a few different places:

- The hidden directory `.kde` (note the period at the beginning), located in your home directory, contains a large number of files that store &kde; settings. Some subdirectories you may find useful are:`.kde/share/config`, which contains configuration files for individual applications; `.kde/Autostart`, which contains links to applications which should start each time you start &kde;; and `.kde/share/apps/kabc`, where your address book is stored.

- The environment variables `KDEDIR` and `KDEDIRS` tell &kde; where its files are stored. You will usually only need to set `KDEDIR` to the directory in which &kde; is installed, but sometimes you might have other &kde; programs installed elsewhere: in this case, you can use the `KDEDIRS` environment variable. Set `KDEDIRS` to a list of all the directories containing &kde; programs, separated by commas. For example, if you have &kde; programs in both `/usr/local/kde` and `/home/phil/kde`, you can use `export KDEDIR=/usr/local/kde,/home/phil/kde` if you use bash or `setenv KDEDIR=/usr/local/kde,/home/phil/kde` if you use sh.

## Related Information

- contains more information about the directories that &kde; uses.