The morning the update prompt appeared, I clicked "restart and update" without thinking. The app came back with a list of agents and none of the usual file tree on the left. Extensions were empty. Keybindings were back to defaults.
My stomach dropped. But the forums were full of people in the same spot, and reading through them I noticed something: in many cases the settings were not deleted, they had simply moved. So before you reinstall or copy files over each other, there are a few things worth checking. Here is the order I would use.
What actually happened: the product split, and so did the config folder
Version 2.0 shifts the product from an IDE for writing code to a desktop app for managing agents. It now ships as a desktop app, an IDE, a CLI, and an SDK.
According to reports on the forum, on Windows the settings location split from %APPDATA%\Antigravity into %APPDATA%\Antigravity IDE, and moving the old folder's contents across brought settings and extensions back for some users. Others noted that the update files landed in the same folder as the old IDE, so the new app appears to take over the original.
I can only vouch for what is publicly reported, and I have not reproduced the behavior on every machine. Please read what follows as a way to make the situation recoverable, not as a guarantee.
| Symptom | First suspect |
|---|---|
| No editor view at all | 2.0 is using the old IDE's location (installing the IDE separately is the suggested route) |
| Extensions and keybindings empty | The config folder split under a new name |
| Chat history missing | History lives under your home directory, separate from the config folder |
| Restored but nothing changed | You swapped files while the app was running, or you are looking at a different profile |
1. Back everything up before touching anything
I made the first mistake myself. Assuming my settings were lost, I copied the old folder straight over the new one and kept no copy of the original. Afterwards I could no longer tell which settings were which.
Now I always take a full copy first. Conversations and agent memory are reported to live in .gemini/antigravity under your home directory, and the advice is to copy that folder before updating.
# What this solves: keep the current state exactly as it is
STAMP=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M)
mkdir -p "$HOME/antigravity-backup-$STAMP"
cp -R "$HOME/.gemini/antigravity" "$HOME/antigravity-backup-$STAMP/gemini-antigravity" 2>/dev/null
echo "Backed up to: $HOME/antigravity-backup-$STAMP"Why do this first? Because the later steps depend on comparing which folder holds the newer settings. If you keep the state you started from, a wrong move is reversible.
2. Count how many config folders you have
If several folders have similar names, your settings were split. The script below changes nothing; it only lists candidates.
# What this solves: tell "deleted" apart from "split under a new name" (read-only)
import os, pathlib
def candidate_roots():
home = pathlib.Path.home()
roots = []
appdata = os.environ.get("APPDATA")
if appdata: # Windows
roots.append(pathlib.Path(appdata))
roots += [home / "Library/Application Support", home / ".config"] # macOS / Linux
return [r for r in roots if r.exists()]
def size_mb(p):
total = 0
for f in p.rglob("*"):
try:
if f.is_file():
total += f.stat().st_size
except OSError:
pass
return total / 1024 / 1024
for root in candidate_roots():
for d in sorted(root.glob("Antigravity*")):
if d.is_dir():
print(f"{size_mb(d):8.1f} MB {d}")If you see both Antigravity and Antigravity IDE and only one is large, that is where your old settings live. If only one folder appears, the cause is probably something other than a folder split.
I look at size because a name alone cannot tell an empty folder from a populated one.
3. Restore by copying, with every app closed
Once you have found it, quit all the apps and copy the old settings into the new location. Copy, not move.
On Windows it looks like this:
# Run only after fully quitting every Antigravity app
$src = "$env:APPDATA\Antigravity"
$dst = "$env:APPDATA\Antigravity IDE"
Copy-Item "$src\User" "$dst\User" -Recurse -Force
Copy-Item "$src\extensions" "$dst\extensions" -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinueUser holds settings and keybindings. Where extensions are stored can differ by version, so if the folder is not found the error is ignored and the script moves on. Several reports say chat history does not come back through this step, which is exactly why step 1 comes first.
4. The IDE and 2.0 can live side by side
If you need an editor, you do not have to uninstall 2.0. The suggestion is to install the IDE separately and use both. Keep the install locations apart, and finish step 3 before launching the IDE for the first time, because a first launch may write fresh defaults over what you restored.
There is also a report that Google shipped a fix adding a migration flow to the installer. If you have not updated yet, check whether that is available first.
How I check that it worked
After copying, launch the app and look at three things only. Are the settings you changed still there? Does the extension list show the names you had before? Do your own lines appear in the keybindings file?
If even one is missing, stop and compare against the backup from step 1. Extensions in particular can show up in the list and still fail to load; in that case reinstalling them is usually faster. If settings and keybindings are back, you can get on with your work.
What to do next
Take the step 1 backup today, before anything else. As an indie developer keeping a few apps running, I cannot always postpone an update. On those days I hold to one order: back up before the update, compare after it.