Managing Projects and Media > Managing Projects and Users > About Projects and Users >

# Users

A user is a profile that provides:

- EditDesk display preferences
- Module preferences
- Hotkey assignments for user interface controls
- A filesystem environment (home directory) for managing preferences

User preferences are automatically saved with the corresponding user profile and are independent of projects. You do not have to explicitly save them if you load another user or exit Smoke. By managing your user profiles, you can:

- Save EditDesk preferences such as user interface, timeline, Player, soft effects settings, as well as clip information display options.
- Customize pen and tablet preferences such as pressure sensitivity and tablet margins. See User Interface Preferences.
- Modify default hotkeys and create new ones using the Hotkey Editor.
- Customize grids and guides for the Player and image window. See Working with Grids and Guides.
- Customize module-based preferences such as the colour of the crop box and object icon transparency to set up modules how you want.

You may have preferences that you want to set up for different kinds of work in the same module. An easy way to keep several sets of preferences for a module is to save module preferences to your user's home directory. You can then load them at any time. You can even copy these preference resource files to a networked location or to a portable medium and load them on other systems. You can also load the module preferences of another user at any time. See Saving, Loading, and Deleting Items.