Where are the Cities Skylines saves?

Let’s take a look at the locations of the Cities Skylines saves. This can come in handy if you are a YouTuber / streamer or moderator and need to back up your saves from Cities Skylines. However, do not forget that further machinations with saves may destroy cities you have built.

Save folders for Windows

For Windows, you need to open this folder:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines\Saves

It may also happen that you do not see the save folders, which is a problem. In case it happens, select “show hidden folders” in settings of your operating system. After that, you should see appData and Colossal Order as in the path above.

Save folders for MacBook

For MacBook, you need to open this folder:

/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Colossal Order/Cities_Skylines/Saves

In my MacBook, I can’t find this folder with just a click. Because of that, I like to use Shift + Command + G for a direct search in folders. After that, I go to ~/Library/Application Support/Colossal Order/ and there I see all the saved games.

Save folders for Linux

For Linux, you need to open this folder:

$XDG_DATA_HOME/Colossal Order/Cities_Skylines/Saves

All saves on Linux are oriented by $XDG_DATA_HOME. This defines the base directory against which user-specific data files are to be stored. If you are used to work with Linux, you probably know where your saves are.

Save folders through Cloud?

The best way, at least from my perspective, is saving the game through Cloud. Is it because I play Cities Skylines on my MacBook through GeForce Now and GeForce Now is good for Cloud gaming. The only catch is that mods do not work here. If you use Cloud in GeForce Now, you cannot play with mods at the same time.

How to back up your Cities Skylines saves?

To back up Cities Skylines saves, you need to open your folder with current saves. Then, you need to create another folder to which the saves will be backed up. All hidden files need to be made visible because the saves may end up being saved as hidden files. When you see them, you need to copy files and paste the files into a new folder.

I would recommend to back up everything to folders with date and their version. I like to use the schema of target folders, for example 2023_07_07_v0_0_1. Thanks to that, I am able to know and decide which day I made the backup and what version it is.

Restoring your saves from the backup is easy. First of all, you create a new backup with higher version (because you don’t want to lose your progress you just made) and after that, you go to the previous version of your backup and simply copy files back to your save game location.

Where are the screenshots stored?

If you make screenshots with Shift + F12, then you can see them in the folder called /screenshots on the same level as the saves. If you make screenshots with F12, then should find them in the base Steam screens folder.

Where are my saved mods and addons?

If you have saved any mods from Steam Workshop, you will find them in the base Steam folder, which may be Steam folder / steamapps / workshop / content / 255710. However, this depends on your installation.

Or if we talk about addons, these can be found in the /addons folder. This folder is on the same level as /screenshots or /saves in the Cities Skylines folder.

>> More about mods save folders