How to force IntelliJ to use a different home folder

Not 100% sure if this can be a solution, you can change the HOME folder of Intellij IDEA. Look for the folder where the idea executable is. In Linux I have on

 ~/applications/idea13/bin  

On Windows you can check the properties of the menu item. There should be file idea.properties that contains the home folder location of the idea files.

You can find more information here that describe more details:

Locations can be changed by editing the following file: IDE_HOME\bin\idea.properties

Follow the comments in idea.properties file to change the defaults, make sure to un-comment the lines defining these properties: idea.config.path idea.system.path idea.plugins.path idea.log.path

On the other hand you can change the location of your project to D:/Users/David. you should also have a look inside the project folder, there should be a .idea folder with has a library directory. They contains the location of the libs used in the project with their paths.

As dawez allready answered, you should edit idea.properties to set config, system, plugins and log paths.

But if you want to change the user.home path, then you must edit idea.exe.vmoptions file. Just add the following at the end of the file:

-Duser.home=your_new_user_home_path

If you use idea64.exe then you should edit idea64.exe.vmoptions file.