How to Find and Change the Epic Games Installed Directory

Tech & Gaming
1

knowing where epic games installs your games and how to change the default install location saves a lot of headaches, especially if you have multiple drives and want games on a specific one. here’s the full rundown.

Default install location

By default, Epic Games Launcher installs games to:
C:\Program Files\Epic Games\[GameName]

Each game gets its own subfolder. For large games this can quickly fill up a C: drive.

Changing the default install location

In Epic Games Launcher:

  1. Click your profile icon or the three-line menu > Settings
  2. Scroll to “Manage Games” or find the “Default Install Location” option
  3. Click the folder path shown and change it to your preferred drive/folder
  4. This sets the default for all future installs

When installing a new game, the launcher also lets you choose a different location per-game during installation – there’s a “Browse” option on the install confirmation screen.

Moving an already-installed game to a different drive

Epic’s launcher doesn’t have a built-in “move game” feature as smoothly as Steam does, but it works with a manual process:

  1. In Epic Launcher, uninstall the game but do not delete the files when prompted (or cancel the uninstall before it deletes)
  2. Actually, the cleaner method: just move the game folder to the new location using File Explorer
  3. In Epic Launcher, click “Install” on the game again
  4. When the install dialog appears, change the install path to the folder where you moved the files
  5. Epic will scan the existing files, verify them, and download only what’s missing rather than the entire game

This avoids a full re-download for large games.

Finding where a specific game is installed

Epic Launcher > Library > click the three dots on a game > Manage > the “Install Location” shows the current path. You can also click the folder icon there to open it directly in File Explorer.

Verifying game files

If a game is having issues after being moved or if files may be corrupted: Library > three dots on game > Manage > Verify. Epic checks all game files against its manifest and redownloads anything that’s missing or corrupted.

2

the move-then-point-installer method works well. moving fortnite (100gb+) to a different drive via file explorer and then having epic verify rather than re-download saves hours. the verify step takes a few minutes and only redownloads the small percentage of files that didn’t transfer correctly.

3

The per-game install location selection during installation is something people miss. The default path is shown but there’s a browse button right there to choose a different one. Not obvious if you’re clicking through quickly, but it means you never have to move games after the fact if you choose correctly at install time.