How do you prevent PHPStorm from opening a project on start?

Question

It takes a while to open some larger projects and I am just wondering if I get to the "Welcome to PHPStorm" screen by default instead of the last opened project.

Answer 1

1. Settings/Preferences
2. Appearance & Behavior | System Settings
3. Reopen last project on startup

P.S.
Settings screen has very handy search box (top left corner) which will narrow possible options a lot.

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UPDATE 2020-12-02: Current 2020.2 version has a bit different name to clarify that it will reopen ALL previously opened projects and not just only last one.

Answer 2

On UBUNTU OS In PHP-Storm 8.0.3, It was as

1. File
2. Settings
3. Appearance & Behavior
4. System Settings
5. Reopen last project on startup ( uncheck this checkbox )

Answer 3

If you try to check uncheck Reopen last project from the Settings | General Preferences on startup but are not able to reach the General Settings box (perhaps because PHPStorm is hanging when it tries to reopen the last project) you can do the following (instructions for Mac but similar for other OS):

vim ~/Library/Preferences/WebIde90/options/ide.general.xml

Add/edit the following to the <application> tag:

<option name="reopenLastProject" value="false" />

This should allow you to restart without any problem. In my case, I was not able to even finish starting PHPStorm until I made the change. After I modified the file I restarted and went to File --> Invalidate Caches Restart as well.

For other OS you can view this page to help file the location of the file.