Where Does Hydrogen Store Songs and Drumkits?
Hydrogen keeps hydrogen.conf plus songs, drumkits and playlists in ~/.hydrogen on desktop, with system kits under /usr/share on Linux.
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Hydrogen predates the XDG fashion and keeps a dot-folder in your home: ~/.hydrogen on Linux and macOS, %USERPROFILE%\.hydrogen on Windows. Inside sit hydrogen.conf and a data/ tree with songs, drumkits, playlists and patterns.
Songs reference kits by name, so moving the folder without its data breaks them. Back up the whole .hydrogen directory and restores stay boring. System kits installed by your package manager are the exception; those live outside home and you only ever read them.
Where Hydrogen stores this, by platform
~/.hydrogen
Contains hydrogen.conf and the data/ tree (songs, drumkits, playlists). Newer builds may prefer XDG paths, so peek at ~/.config and ~/.local/share if this folder is absent.
~/.hydrogen
Same dot-folder layout as Linux. Open it with Finder > Go > Go to Folder, since it is hidden.
%USERPROFILE%\.hydrogen
Same structure (hydrogen.conf plus data/) under your user profile. Type the path into the Explorer address bar to jump there.
Frequently asked questions
Where do Hydrogen drumkits live?
User kits live in the data/drumkits subfolder of the paths above. System kits ship under /usr/share/hydrogen/data/drumkits (read-only); load one and Save As to get an editable user copy.
I heard Hydrogen moved to XDG folders. Which path is right?
Recent development builds migrate toward XDG locations (~/.config and ~/.local/share). If both exist, check which one your build actually reads before moving samples around.
Notice an outdated path? Let us know.