CLion stopped recognising project as a CMake project

Hello!

In such cases it usually helps to close the project (File | Close Project), delete the entire .idea directory and reopen the project using "Open" on Welcome Screen (point CLion to the top-level CMakeLists.txt file, then choose "Open as Project").

Thanks

I am seeing this problem quite often since some years. It still occurs on CLion 2023.1.2. It happens when updating the iOS/macOS SDKs while CLion is running. If CLion is closed during the SDK update, the problem does not happen. Deleting the .idea folder is annoying as I am manually editing options in the misc section. Anna Falevskaya

Is there any other option instead of removing .idea to force a project to work ? I lost my project settings because of it, now i have to spend an houre to back to the build configuration. I'm very disapointed with this bug.

I am running into this issue frequently - especially when switching to other Git branches that have no `CMakeLists.txt` file. 

CLion then no longer shows the CMake tool window. Removing the workspace configuration is not a valid solution as I have custom build and run targets that would be lost. 

I found to fix this I need to manually add a `CMakeWorkspace` component to the `.idea/misc.xml` file.

<project version="4">
  ...
  <component name="CMakeWorkspace" PROJECT_DIR="$PROJECT_DIR$" />
  ...
</project>   

thanks to Martin Weber  

now I can get rid of this anoying behaviour

This still happens with https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin on basically every branch change. Martin's fix only works when `misc.xml` is actually present (not always the case) - otherwise I need to do a `git clean -fxd` after closing CLion.

This still happens all the time - is there a workaround at least to keep the CMake tool window around when the project isn't recognized?

Can confirm Lorinc's comment. This still happens from time to time and is extremely frustrating.

Same problem just happen to me! I am on a pressure to make some fix and suddenly CLion ha lost all preset and does not seems to recognize the setup anymore, completely out of the blue!

Still happening in 2025.3. Had to reset all of my cmake profiles after switching between projects.

Still occurs in 2026.1. Fortunately, Martin's workaround is still effective - but this issue is now 5 years old!

This is absurd, can we add a setting to the IDE for this? It is the most annoying behavior ever

Same problem 2 weeks ago, solved (again) and today: cmake project lost (again and again and again….) 

Hi all!

We understand how disruptive and frustrating this behavior is, and we are sorry you experience it.

To investigate the issue, we need to reproduce it. 

I tried switching branches in the bitcoin project in CLion 2026.1.3, as mentioned in this comment, but couldn't reproduce the issue, unfortunately. Even if I switch to the 28.x branch, in which it's an Autotools project (not a CMake one), I just get the “CMakeLists.txt not found in ~/CLionProjects/bitcoin” error in the CMake tool window:

Could you please inform us if you know the steps to reproduce the issue more or less stably? 

Thanks for circling back here. For the past few releases this has been working quite reliably for me, I'm usually not getting the previous errors anymore.