Where does evince store its per-document state (position, etc)?

Question

I'm using evince to view my documents under Linux. One thing bothers me, however. It seems to magically remember the position and settings of the window for every document. I searched all over (the hidden directories in my home folder, system files, gconf) for where it might be saving those settings, but I can't find anything. Does anyone know where those settings are?

Solution 1

The settings are stored under ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/, but this knowledge is of little use since you cannot do anything practical with the binary files therein.

To read or edit the per-document settings, use the following gvfs tools, passing them the path to the document of which you want the settings:

• Reading: gvfs-info /path/to/file. Example line of output: metadata::evince::n-copies: 5

• Editing: gvfs-set-attribute /path/to/file metadata::evince::n-copies 1

• Removing: gvfs-set-attribute /path/to/file -t unset metadata::evince::n-copies (credits to Christophe Drevet-Droguet for this one!)

Paths can be relative to the current dir.

Solution 2

Things have changed since the previous answer was given (October 2011). The window settings of Evince are now being stored in binary, in the directory ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata/.

Solution 3

The per document settings are stored in the file ~/.gnome2/evince/ev-metadata.xml.

Solution 4

You can use gio command. For example, to see the saved position for example.pdf, run gio info -a "metadata::evince::page" example.pdf.

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Comments

[Faheem Mitha]

These seem to be binary files. Any way of figuring out what the settings actually are?

[Arjan]

@Faheem, see the new answer that was just posted.

[Christophe Drevet]

To reset all evince settings for a document: see askubuntu.com/a/819597/88086

[L. Levrel]

@ChristopheDrevet-Droguet Thanks! Answer edited.