Change NuGet package folders used by Visual Studio

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UPD 2024: standalone nuget commands replaced with dotnet nuget CLI. The information provided is relevant for VS2022 and .NET 8.

Cache locations

Solution-local packages folders are no longer used by .NET Core and Visual Studio. The command to list user-specific folders is:

 dotnet nuget locals all --list

And its typical output (I’ve replaced absolute paths with variables and prettified it):

global-packages:    %USERPROFILE%\.nuget\packages

http-cache:         %$LOCAL_APPDATA%\NuGet\v3-cache
temp:               %$LOCAL_APPDATA%\Temp\NuGetScratch
plugins-cache:      %$LOCAL_APPDATA%\NuGet\plugins-cache

Notice that the machine-wide folder isn’t listed there. However, it is defined at Visual Studio settings: Options -> NuGet Package Manager -> Package Sources. By default it is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\NuGetPackages\

In Package Sources, you can add/remove as many cache locations as you want.

Configuration files

NuGet.config files are located here:

  • User-specific: %APPDATA%\NuGet\
  • Machine-wide: %ProgramFiles(x86)%\NuGet\Config\

Any NuGet.config settings can be overriden at many levels (project, solution, user, machine). Read more about NuGet.config hierarchical priority ordering here: How settings are applied.

For example, globalPackagesFolder parameter changes a package cache location:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <config>
    <clear />
    <add key="globalPackagesFolder" value="c:\packages" />
  </config>
</configuration>

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