Options
This submenu allows you to change various IDA options and settings:
See also Menu Bar submenus.
General
Navigate to Options → General to open the IDA Options dialog, where settings are organized thematically across multiple tabs.
Disassembly options
This tab configures the appearance of the disassembly.
The checkboxes/input fields are organized into several categories:
Display disassembly line parts
Line prefixes (non-graph)
This checkbox enables or disables line prefixes display. Line prefix is the address of the current byte:
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_LINEPREFIXES
Stack pointer
If this option is set, IDA will display the value of the stack pointer in the line prefix.
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_SP
Number of opcode bytes (non-graph)
The opcode is the operation code of the current instruction. For the data items, the opcodes are elements of data directives. Sometimes there is not enough place to display all bytes of an item (of a large array, for example). In this case, IDA will display just the few first bytes of the item. For the code items, IDA will try to display all bytes of the instruction, even if it requires adding more lines just for the opcode bytes. If this behavior is not desired, the number of opcode bytes can be specified as a negative value. A negative value -N means to display N opcode bytes on a line but never display empty lines just for the opcode bytes. By default, IDA does not display the opcodes.
Opcode bytes are shown below:
IDA.CFG parameter: OPCODE_BYTES
Comments-related options:
Option
IDA.CFG Parameter
Comments
n/a
Repeatable comments
SHOW_REPEATABLE_COMMENTS
Auto comments
SHOW_AUTOCOMMENTS
Address representation
Function offsets
This option controls the appearance of the line prefixes. If it is enabled, the addresses will be displayed as offsets from a function beginning.
somefunc+0x44
cseg:0x4544
SHOW_SEGMENTS
Include segment addresses
Marking this checkbox, you can enable segment addresses in the disassembly. IDA will show only offsets.
codeseg:0034
0034
SHOW_SEGMENTS
Use segment names
This option controls the appearance of the segment names in the addresses. (codeseg has base 3000)
codeseg:0034
3000:0034
USE_SEGMENT_NAMES
Display disassembly lines
Empty lines
This option enables or disables the presence of the autogenerated empty lines in the disassembly. It could be useful to decrease the number of the blank lines on the screen increasing amount of information on it.
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_EMPTYLINES
Borders between data/code (non-graph)
This command enables or disables the presence of the autogenerated border lines in the disassembly. It could be useful to decrease the number of the blank lines on the screen increasing amount of information on it. A border line looks like this:
Note that you can hide a particular border by using hide border command.
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_BORDERS
Basic block boundaries (non-graph)
This option enables or disables the presence of the autogenerated empty lines at the end of basic blocks in the disassembly.
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_BASIC_BLOCKS
Source line numbers
This options controls the presence of the source line number information in the disassembly. Some object files have this information.
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_SOURCE_LINNUM
Try block lines
This option controls the display of the try block information in the disassembly.
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_TRYBLOCKS
Other text formatting options
Instruction identation (non-graph)
You can change indention of disassembled instructions:
IDA.CFG parameter: INDENTION
Comments identation (non-graph)
You can change indention of comments:
IDA.CFG parameter: COMMENTS_INDENTION
Right margin (non-graph)
This option controls the length of disassembly lines for data directives.
IDA.CFG parameter: MAX_DATALINE_LENGTH
Spaces for tabulation
Low and high suspiciousness limit
Click here to get information about these fields.
Analysis options
This tab allows you to configure analysis settings and processor-specific options.
Target processor: Change the processor type (if multiple types are supported by the current processor module)
Target assembler: Select the assembler style
Additional options (buttons):
Processor specific analysis options: Configure processor-specific settings (available when the current processor supports additional options)
Memory mapping: Define memory mapping ranges (available when the current processor supports memory mapping)
Reanalyze program
Analysis section
The checkboxes:
Enabled
Indicator enabled
allows you to disable and enable the autoanalysis and its indicator.
By default, the auto analysis and indicator are enabled. Disable them only if you are sure it will help.
The analysis indicator is located in the bottom left corner of the main IDA window (upper right corner in text version). Possible values of the indicator:
Hint: you can right-click the analysis indicator to quickly disable or enable it, or to reanalyze the program.
See also auto analysis explanation.
Processor Type
Valid processor types are:
Processor modules can accept additional options that can be passed on the commandline with the -p switch. Currently only the ARM module supports it. For example, -parm:ARMv7-A will turn on options specific for the ARMv7-A architecture, such as NEON instruction set.
For information about additional processor modules, please check supported processors
Please note that when you change the processor type, IDA may change the target assembler, so check it out.
You may get a message saying that IDA does not know the specified processor if IDA fails to load the corresponding processor module.
IDA determines the default processor using the input file extension and the contents of the input file. The table which describes the input file extensions and the corresponding processor types is located in IDA.CFG file and looks like this:
If you want to change the default processor type, you need to change this table. You may add/delete rows in this table.
See also: ARM processor specifics.
ARM processor specifics
Since architecture version v4 (introduced in ARM7 cores), ARM processors have a new 16-bit instruction set called Thumb (the original 32-bit set is referred to as "ARM"). Since these two sets have different instruction encodings and can be mixed in one segment, we need a way to specify how to disassemble instructions. For this purpose, IDA uses a virtual segment register named 'T'. If its value is 0, then ARM mode is used. Otherwise, Thumb mode is used. ARM is the default mode. Please note that if you change the value of T register for a range, IDA will destroy all instructions in that range because their disassembly is no longer correct.
IDA use UAL (Unified Assembly Language) syntax by default which uses the same syntax for both ARM and Thumb mode. If necessary, legacy assembler syntax can be selected in Analysis options.
To decode Aarch64 (ARM64) instructions the segment with instructions must be set to 64-bit.
Processor options for ARM
Simplify instructions
Disable pointer dereferencing
No automatic ARM-Thumb switch
Disable BL jumps detection
Scattered MOVT/MOVW pairs analysis A pair of MOVT and MOVW instructions can be used to load any 32-bit constant into a register without having to use the literal pool. For example: MOVW R1, #0xABA2 MOVT R1, #0x32AA is simplified by IDA into MOV R1, 0x32AAABA2 (unless macro creation is turned off)
Edit ARM architecture options
Command-line options
See also
Set default segment register value commands to learn how to specify the segment register value.
Specify Target Assembler
This command allows you to change the target assembler, i.e. the assembler for which the output is generated. You select the target assembler from a menu. The menu items depend on the current processor type.
Kernel options
Here you can change various kernel analysis options:
Kernel analysis options 1
Trace execution flow This option allows IDA to trace execution flow and convert all references bytes to instructions. Mark typical code sequences as code
Locate and create jump tables
Control flow to data segment is ignored
Analyze and create all xrefs
Delete instructions with no xrefs This option allows IDA to undefine instructions without any xrefs to them. For example, if you undefine an instruction at the start of a function, IDA will trace execution flow and delete all instructions that lose references to them. Create function if data xref data->code32 exists
Create functions if call is present This option allows IDA to create function (proc) if a call instruction is present. For example, the presence of:
Create function tails
Create stack variables
Propagate stack argument information
Propagate register argument information
Trace stack pointer This option allows IDA to trace the value of the SP register. Perform full stack pointer analysis
Perform 'no-return' analysis
Try to guess member function types
See also analysis options 2 analysis options 3
Kernel analysis options 2
Truncate functions upon code deletion
Create string literals if data xref exists If IDA encounters a data reference to an undefined item, it checks for the presence of the string literal at the target. If the length of the candidate string literal is big enough (more than 4 chars in 16bit or data segments; more than 16 chars otherwise), IDA will automatically create a string literal. Check for unicode strings This option allows IDA to check for the presence of the unicode strings in the program and creates them if necessary. IDA will check for the unicode strings only if the string style is set to "C-style (0 terminated)" or "Unicode". Create offsets and segments using fixup info
You can display the relocation information attached to the current item by using show internal flags command. Create offset if data xref to seg32 exists
Convert 32bit instruction operand to offset
Automatically convert data to offsets
Use flirt signatures
Comment anonymous library functions
Multiple copy library function recognition
Automatically hide libary functions
Rename jump functions as j_...
Rename empty functions as nullsub_...
Coagulate data at the final pass This option is meaningful only if "Make final analysis pass" is enabled. It allows IDA to convert unexplored bytes to data arrays in the non-code segments. Coagulate code at the final pass This option is meaningful only if "Make final analysis pass" is enabled. It allows IDA to convert unexplored bytes to data arrays in the code segments. Make final analysis pass This option allows IDA to coagulate all unexplored bytes by converting them to data or instructions. See also analysis options 1 analysis options 3
Kernel analysis options 3
Enable EH analysis
Enable RTTI analysis
Enable macros
Merge strlits
See also analysis options 1 analysis options 2
Cross-References options
This tab configures how cross-references (xrefs) are displayed.
IDA maintains cross-references automatically. Of course, when IDA starts to disassemble a new file, the cross-references will not appear immediately; they will be collected during background analysis.
Cross-reference parts
Display segments in xrefs
This checkbox enables or disables segments in cross references:
Display xref type mark
If this option is disabled, IDA will not display "CODE" or "DATA" in the cross-references.
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_XREF_TYPES
Display function offsets
This option controls the appearance of the cross-reference addresses. If it is enabled, the addresses will be displayed as offsets from a function beginning.
Example:
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_XREF_FUNC
Display xref values
If this option is disabled, IDA will just display the presence of cross-references, like this:
IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_XREF_VALUES
Right margin
Determines the maximal length of a line with the cross references.
IDA.CFG parameter: MAX_XREF_LENGTH
Cross reference depth
This value "how many bytes of an object to look at to collect cross references". For example, we have an array:
If some instruction refers to the 5-th element of the array:
IDA.CFG parameter: MAX_TAIL
Number of displayed xrefs
Determines the maximal number of the cross references to display. You may keep this value low because you can access all xrefs by using the Jump to cross reference command. IDA.CFG parameter: SHOW_XREFS
String options
This tab sets up the string literals options.
Generate names If this option is set, IDA will give meaningful names to newly created string literals.
Name generation
Prefix
The prefix inserted in the field will be used to form the string name.
Mark as autogenerated
If a name is marked as autogenerated, it will be displayed in a different color and will be included in the list of names depending on the current setting.
Generate serial names
IDA can generate serial names for string literals, i.e.
To enable serial names generation, specify prefix for names, starting serial number, and number of leading zeroes.
Each time you create a string literal, IDA generates a new serial name and assigns it to the string.
String literal next line char
This symbol, when encountered in the string, will make IDA start a new line in the string representation in the disassembly. Usually it is the line feed character ('\n').
Comment string literal references
This option tells IDA to display the contents of the string literal next to the instruction or offset that refers to the string.
Browser options
This tab of IDA Options configures the disassembly browser's display behavior, hints, highlighting and navigation features. There are two groups of settings:
The first group is for hints that are displayed when the mouse is hovered over some text.
The second group is for other navigation and display settings, like highlighting.
Hints
Number of lines for identifier hints
Specifies how tall the hint window will be initially. IDA may decide to display less lines than specified if the hint is small. The user can resize the hint window using the mouse wheel.
Delay for identifier hints
Milliseconds that pass before the hint appears when the user hovers the mouse pointer over an identifier.
Mouse wheel resizes hint window
Permit to resize the hint window by using the mouse wheel. Can be turned off if the user does not want to resize the hints.
No hints if debugger is active
Hints will be disabled when the debugger is active. This may be useful to speed of debugging: calculating hints for zero filled ranges can be very expensive.
Other settings
Auto highlight the current identifier
Highlight the current identifier everywhere on the screen. IDA tries to determine if the current identifier denotes a register. In this case it will highlight references to other parts of the register. For example, if "AL" is highlighted, IDA will also highlight "AH", "AX", and "EAX" (if the current processor is x86).
Unhide collapsed items automatically when jumping to them
If this option is set on, IDA will automatically uncollapse hidden functions if the user decides to jump to them. As soon as the user quits the function by pressing Esc, the function is automatically collapsed again.
Lazy jumps
If this option is set on, IDA will not redraw the disassembly window if the jump target is already on the screen. In this case, it will just move the cursor to the specified address. This option leads to less screen redraws and less jumpy behavior.
Enable history sharing
This option is enabled by default. It keeps a shared global history across multiple widgets (including Disassembly, Pseudocode, Local Types, and Stack), allowing you to navigate back and forward between them.
Number of items in navigation stack drop-down menus
Specifies the number of entries in the drop-down menu for the 'Jump' toolbar.
Number of lines for auto scroll
Specifies how many lines force automatic scrolling of the disassembly view.
Caret blinking interval
Specifies how fast the input caret blinks (in milliseconds). Must be greater than or equal to 500, or zero. Zero means to disable blinking.
Graph options
This tab configures the visual appearance and behavior of graph view and proximity view.
General
Use graph view by default
IDA switches to graph mode for each 'jump' command.
Enable graph animation
Animate the graph layout, movement, and group collapsing/uncollapsing. While animation takes time, it gives the user some idea what's going on.
Draw node shadows
Display shadows for each graph node. Shadows are not displayed for really huge or ridiculously small nodes.
Auto fit graph into window
Zoom the graph so that it occupies the whole window.
Fit window max zoom level 100%
The 'fit window' command maximal zoom level is 100%.
Re-layout graph if nodes overlap
IDA recomputes the graph layout if a node overlap is detected. The presence of a custom layout (if the user has displaced some graph nodes) effectively turns off this option.
Re-layout graph upon screen refresh
IDA recomputes the graph layout at each screen refresh. Turning this option off accelerates IDA but then a manual layout might be required after some operations.
Truncate at the right margin
All nodes at truncated at the right margin. The right margin is specified in the Options → General → Disassembly tab. This option narrows the graph but hides some information by truncating long lines.
Lock graph layout
Locks the graph layout by ignoring attempts to displace nodes. This prevents the creation of custom layouts that might lead to ugly graph layouts when nodes change their sizes.
Proximity view
Show data references
Show data cross-referenced items in proximity view.
Hide library functions
Do not show data or code cross-references to library functions, only show cross-referenced local functions.
Unlimited children recursion
Recurse until there are no more callees (children) of the currently selected central node and all of his children.
Recurse into library functions
Displays children data or code cross-references from library functions.
Max parents recursion
Maximum recursion level for displaying parents of the currently selected central node. The value 0 disables parents recursion.
Max children recursion
Maximum recursion level for displaying children of the currently selected central node. The value 0 means no maximum recursion level.
Max nodes per level
Maximum number of nodes to show per level of children and parents.
See also: right margin
Lumina options
This tab configures Lumina server connection settings.
Servers
Use public
Sets host and port to the default public server hosted by Hex-Rays. No username or password is required.
Private server authentication
Specify the username and password credentials for a Private Lumina server.
Automatically use Lumina server for analysis
Instructs IDA to fetch function metadata from the current Lumina server, after the initial auto-analysis is complete. This helps with the recognition of known functions stored in the database of the Lumina server.
Lumina command line options
Command line switch '-Olumina' overrides for ida session the primary server and '-Osecondary_lumina' the secondary one.
List of options
Example
Use the public lumina as secondary server for this ida session
Miscellaneous options
This tab configures miscellaneous options including editor settings, encoding and types autocompletion.
Editor
A text editor is to be used when the user decides to edit an IDC script using the IDC toolbar.
Navigation band refresh interval (milliseconds)
Specifies how often the navigation band will be refreshed. IDA tries to minimize the number of redrawings because they could be really time and processor consuming (imagine a huge program, 50-100 megabytes of code. It would take a long time to refresh information on the navigation band because the whole program will be examined to determine how to draw the band). If this option is set to 0, the navigation band is refreshed only when the cursor is moved far enough to reflect its movement on the band.
Convert already defined bytes
Determines how IDA should behave when user operations would end up redefining some already-defined bytes.
Associate .IDB file extension with IDA
Whether or not the .IDB extension should be associated, at the OS-level, with IDA.
Enable autocomplete in forms
Determines whether input fields should provide an auto-complete combo box by default.
Output files encoding
The encoding used to generate output text files from IDA. The value '' means that the IDB's default 8 bit-per-unit encoding will be used.
Types autocompletion
Enable autocomplete for types
Enables or disables the entire autocomplete mechanism for types. If you uncheck the box, the behavior will not differ from previous versions. Enabled by default.
Case sensitive
Changes case sensitivity. When enabled, for example, the prefix b will show bucket but not BigStruct. Disabled by default.
Enable autocomplete for curly braces
Enables or disables autocompletion of curly braces and indents. When enabled, typing { inserts a closing brace on a new line, with an indented empty line and the cursor placed in between. Enabled by default.
Enable type hints
Enables or disables hints when selecting a type from the autocomplete suggestions. These hints behave similarly to the hints in Local Types. Enabled by default.
Colors
The IDA Colors dialog lets you change the active theme or fine-tune the one currently in use. Each tab lets you customize specific parts of the UI.
IDA keeps the color configuration in the registry. There are 3 predefined schemes. The user can modify the existing schemes or add his own schemes. New schemes should be added to the "themes" subdirectory in IDA.
Font
This dialog allows you to customize the font used in listings.
Feature Flags
This dialog lists optional features that can be enabled or disabled. By default, the two options below are enabled, supporting the new JumpAnywhere feature:
Override G shortcut with new Jump Anywhere dialog.
(If disabled, the G will continue to trigger "Jump to address..." dialog).
Enable preview pane in Jump Anywhere dialog.
Shortcuts
This dialog allows you to view and customize all keyboard shortcuts used in IDA. You can use Ctrl + F to search by command name or keyboard shortcut.
Show command palette
This provides quick access to all available IDA actions with shortcuts and descriptions.
Repeat last palette command
This option re-executes the most recently used command from the command palette.
Disable undo
This command completely disables the undo feature.
See also
Reset undo history
This command clears the undo history. After it the Undo and Redo commands become unavailable. However, once the user performs a new action, IDA will again start journaling all database modifications.
A side effect of this command is fast autoanalysis: since there is no user action to revert yet, IDA does not maintain undo buffers and this speeds up the analysis.
See also
Assembler Directives
This command enables/disables the generation of some assembler directives, namely:
Sometimes (when you do not intend to assemble the output file), you may want to disable their generation.
Names Representation
Dummy names are automatically generated by IDA. They are used to denote subroutines, program locations and data.
Dummy names have various prefixes depending on the item type and value:
You can change representation of dummy names. IDA supports several types of dummy names:
If you have selected names type 10 (enumerated names), you may renumber them using a checkbox. The process is relatively fast, surprisingly.
The best representation for MS DOS programs is #0, for 16-bit processors - #7, and for 32-bit processors - #8. You can change dummy names type any time you want.
You can also set up types of names included in the name list. IDA knows about the following types of names:
Dummy names may be public or weak, but they never appear in the list of names. You can specify the type of a name when you create or modify it.
You can also set maximal length of new names. Old names will not be affected by this parameter.
See also: Rename command.
Demangled Names
IDA can demangle mangled C++ names of the most popular C++ compilers:
The demangled names are represented in two forms: short and long form. The short form is used when a name is used as a reference, the long form is used at the declaration.
You can set how demangled C++ names must be represented:
You can setup short and long forms of demangled names. Short form is used when a reference to the name is made; long form is used at the declaration.
To make demangled names more readable, we introduce the possibility to suppress pointer modifiers (near/far/huge).
To demangle GNU C v3.x names, the "Assume GCC v3.x names" checkbox should be set, otherwise such names might not be demangled. furthermore, to make the demangled name more compact, unsigned types may be displayed as uchar, uint, ushort, ulong. The same with signed basic types.
If the "Override type info" checkbox is set, the demangled name overrides the type information if both are present.
See also How to customize demangled names
Customize Demangled Names
All your changes will be saved in the current database. If you want to change the form of demangled names for all new databases, then you need to edit the configuration file, variables 'ShortNameForm' and 'LongNameForm'. Below is the list of all checkboxes with examples (spaces are inserted only for the ease of understanding):
Only main name
No underscores in calling conventions
No calling conventions for parameters and __based()
No return type of functions
No "based()" specifier
No calling conventions
No postfix const
No access keywords
No throw descriptions
No static and virtual keywords
No UDT keywords
No const and volatile keywords
No __closure keyword
No __unaligned keyword
No __pin/__box/__gc
Suppress pointer modifiers
Quash j_
Transfer j_
Ignore postfix _nn
Compiler
This dialog allows the user to specify the compiler used to create the program along with the memory model, default calling convention, ABI and other parameters.
Please note that while some combinations of the parameters are meaningless, IDA doesn't check them for validity. It is up to the user to specify a correct combination.
IDA tries to determine the correct values automatically.
The include directories are a list of directories that look for the standard C headers. This parameter is used during parsing C header files. The directories must be separated by ';' in MS Windows and ':' in Linux. The predefined macros field has the same format and is used similarly. Please note that IDA doesn't define any compiler-specific macros by default.
Parser options
You can select between different parsers using the parser settings located at the bottom of the Compiler options dialog.
IDA provides three parser options:
legacy - old internal IDA parser (will be removed in future versions)
old_clang - previous parser based on clang
clang - new parser introduced in IDA 9.2, (based on LLVM)
Parser Configuration
The old_clang and new clang parser can be fine-tuned using the Parser specific options dialog.
String literals
With this dialog you can setup string styles and also create a new string immediately at the current location.
The following string styles are defined:
If you select "character terminated" string style then you may specify up to 2 termination characters. The string will be terminated by any of these characters. If the second character is equal to 0, then it is ignored.
In IDA Qt you can also set a specific encoding to be used to display the string, or change the defaults for all strings. See string encodings.
String encodings
IDA Qt can display program strings using different encodings. You can specify default encodings for all strings or override the encoding of a specific string.
The following encodings can be used:
<default> - the default encoding for this string type (8-bit or 16-bit)
<no conversion> - the string bytes are printed using the current system encoding (after translating with XlatAsciiOutput array in the configuration file).
Windows codepages (e.g. 866, CP932, windows-1251)
Charset names (e.g. Shift-JIS, UTF-8, Big5)
You can add new encodings to the list using the context menu item Insert (Ins hotkey).
On Linux/OS X, you can run "iconv -l" to see the available encodings. Please note that some encodings are not supported on all systems.
Setup data types
This command allows you to select the data types used in the round-robin carousel in MakeData command.
Valid data types are:
Naturally, not all data types are usable for all processors. For example, Intel 8051 processor doesn't have the 'double word' type.
Furthermore, this command allows you to select a data type for the current undefined item and convert it to data.
Please note that if the current processor does not support a data type, you cannot assign it even if you have selected it. If you unselect all data types, IDA will use the 'byte' type.
Source paths
In this dialog you can configure path mappings to help IDA locate source files in different locations.
Last updated
Was this helpful?