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P4 Admin Documentation | 2026.1

# Configure P4 Admin preferences

To configure settings for P4 Admin, select Edit > Preferences​ (Windows) or P4 Admin > Preferences​ (Mac). The Preferences dialog box includes the following configuration pages:

- Connections
- Performance
- Logging
- Display
- Files
- Behavior
- Tools
- Editor
- Diff
- HTML Tools

Click Apply to save your changes. Click OK to save your changes and exit the dialog box.

## Connections

You can configure the following settings for connecting to a P4 Server:

When the application launches:

- Restore all previously opened connections: Do not prompt for connection settings. Instead, reconnect to the server to which you were connected during your last session.

Opening and closing connections:

- Use IP-specific tickets when logging in: Specifies whether your login ticket is restricted to the IP address from which you are connecting.
- Automatically log off when closing a connection: Specifies whether your ticket is invalidated when you log out.

Automatically try to reconnect to the server every: `30` seconds

30 is the default value for a new installation, but you can specify a different value or clear the checkbox.

By default, P4 Admin checks whether the current connection has been lost. If so, it tries to reconnect at the specified interval. This feature is convenient because you do not need to manually reconnect to the P4 Server.

## Performance

You can configure how much data P4 Admin processes during a session to minimize server load for frequently run commands and large data transfers. The following settings are available:

- Check server for updates every n minutes: Specifies how often P4 Admin checks P4 Server for updated file information. Frequent checks enable P4 Admin to display current file status but increase the workload on P4 Server.
- Maximum size of file to preview (excludes audio and video files): Limits the size of image files displayed in the Preview tab on the Files pane, to limit the amount of image data sent from P4 Server to P4V.

## Logging

You can configure the following logging options:

Log pane options:

- Show p4 reporting commands: Specifies whether the log pane in the Administration Tool window displays all commands issued by the Administration Tool, including commands issued by the Administration Tool to obtain status information from the P4 Server.

Logging to a file:

- Enable logging to file: Logs Administration Tool activity to the specified file.

  - Name: Specifies the name and location of the log file.
  - Size: Specifies the maximum size of the log file.

See also About command groups, which logs how a single command might result in a set of command being run.

## Display

You can configure the following Administration Tool display and localization options:

Application:

- Dates: Sets the date format used throughout the Administration Tool.

  - OS format: Use the format that your operating system uses.
  - Perforce standard (yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss): Use the application standard.
- Scale application icons based on (requires restart): Select Calculated primary monitor resolution if you mainly view P4V on your primary monitor. If you view P4V on a secondary monitor with a different resolution than the primary monitor, select Custom size and move the slider to the scaling that is right for your secondary monitor.
- Application color scheme (requires restart): Select Light (default) for the classic P4V colors. Select Dark if you prefer light font on a dark background. On the Mac and Windows a third option is System, which matches the current appearance of macOS or Windows.

Localization:

- Language used for application menus, labels, and dialogs (requires restart): Select language.

- Set encoding for all connections to: Sets the character encoding for connections to a unicode-mode P4 Server.

  If you do not set the encoding here, you are prompted to enter the character encoding every time you set up a connection to a unicode-mode P4 Server. The encoding that you set here does not affect server connections whose character encoding has already been set at connection. If you are unsure which setting to choose, consult your P4 Server administrator.

## Files

You can configure the way the Administration Tool displays files and file icons:

- Show Perforce filetype for files in the Depot tree: Toggles display of file type in the tree pane.
- Show revision information for files in the Depot tree: Toggles display of revision numbers in the tree pane.

## Application Font

You can configure the font family, style, and size for the application font and file content font that P4 Admin uses. For file content, you can also select to Show fixed sized fonts only. Selecting this option limits the values available in the Font family list to fixed-sized fonts.

## Behavior

You can configure the following Administration Tool user interface behaviors:

Drag and drop:

- on a file, do a diff comparisons: When selected, P4 Admin launches the Diff dialog box when you drop a file on another file.
- anywhere within a changelist, move open files to new changelist: When selected, P4 Admin moves any open files to a new changelist when you drop a file within a changelist.
- on a file, do nothing: When selected, P4 Admin does not do anything when you drop a file on another file.

## Tools

You can configure the following Revision Graph and Time-Lapse View options:

Revision Graph:

- Limit Revision Graph to ancestors and descendants: Limits a file’s integration history to ancestors and descendants (default). This option has the smallest footprint and ensures optimized performance.
- Show Full Revision history in Revision Graph: Displays the full integration history of the branch. With this option, the revision graph might take longer to display.

Time-Lapse View:

- By default Time-lapse View should show: Specifies whether Time-lapse View displays the integration/merge history for the selected file by default. You can also toggle the display of integration history in Time-lapse View.

## Editor

To associate file types with the applications you use to edit them:

1. Click Add.
2. Select a file extension from the drop-down list.
3. Enter or browse for the associated application.
4. (Optional) Select Always use the selected application to open files of this type to set the application as the default.
5. Click Save.

You can enter as many applications as you like for each extension. All of the applications will appear as options when you right-click a file in the Administration Tool and select Open With.

Note

Any application that you’ve used to open a file from the context menu in the Administration Tool appears by default as an associated application on the Editor page in the Administration Tool Preferences dialog box, unless you remove it.

## Diff

To set the default diff application, select one of the following:

1. P4 Merge: The companion diff tool.

2. Other application: Browse to your preferred diff tool.

   To specify arguments for third-party diff applications, enter %1 for the name of the first file and %2 for the name of the second file in the Arguments field. Perforce replaces these placeholders with the actual filenames when calling the diff application.

To assign diff applications by file type:

1. Click Add.
2. Select a file extension from the drop-down list.
3. Enter or browse for the associated application.

4. Specify arguments for third-party diff applications in the Arguments field:

   Enter %1 for the name of the first file and %2 for the name of the second file. The Administration Tool replaces these placeholders with the actual filenames when calling the diff application.

5. Click Save.

   The extension and associated application are displayed in the list of file type-application associations.

## HTML Tools

You can Enable Tools and limit access to targets by only accepting HTML Tools from Permitted Base URLs.

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