Instances

Mod Organizer can manage multiple games at the same time. Each game is managed in what's called an instance. An instance contains:

• Mods
• Downloads
• Profiles
• Overwrite
• Settings
• Logs

There are two types of instances: global and portable.

Global instance

All global instances are stored in a common location, outside of Mod Organizer itself. By default, global instances are in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\ModOrganizer\. Each instance lives in a separate folder. If there are multiple installations of Mod Organizer on the system, they will all find these instances.

Global instances allow for managing multiple games from a single Mod Organizer installation. The program can be installed somewhere like C:\Modding\MO2, well outside of game folders, and only one installation has to be updated when there is a new release of Mod Organizer.

Switching between global instances or creating a new instance is easy: the first button on the toolbar opens a window that lists all the available instances and there is a "Create new instance" button that starts the process of creating a new one.

Portable instance

An installation of Mod Organizer can have one portable instance. All the files and folders that would normally be in a global instance folder are stored directly inside Mod Organizer's installation folder instead.

The main advantage of a portable instance is that it is self-contained and easy to move somewhere else. However, managing multiple games requires multiple installations of Mod Organizer. This makes it more time consuming to update Mod Organizer and more difficult to switch between instances.