By default TileMill manages project files, data and other configuration in a MapBox
directory on your hard drive. TileMill will create this directory and its contents automatically when you first start the program.
Mac OS X: The MapBox
directory should be in your user account’s Documents
directory.
Ubuntu: The MapBox
directory is located at /usr/share/mapbox
. You may want to symlink this to your user’s home directory for easier access.
The layout of the MapBox
directory is as follows:
MapBox/
cache/
data/
export/
project/
app.db
The cache directory contains a local copy of any remote datasources you add to your projects. For example, if you add the http://mapbox-geodata.s3.amazonaws.com/natural-earth-1.3.0/physical/10m-rivers-north-america.zip shapefile to one of your projects, it will be saved to the cache directory and symlinked into your project’s layers directory:
MapBox/cache/5316a7a8-10m-rivers-north-america
The data directory is where you should place any data files you would like to use on your maps. When adding or editing a layer you will be able to use this directory in the file browser.
The export directory contains any export files generated by TileMill.
The project directory contains projects accessible by TileMill.