Sublime Text 3 customizations vanished, is the Packages folder not being read?

Question

After restarting my mac, all my sublime text customizations (packages, key bindings, syntax specific settings etc.) have vanished.

It's as if it were a fresh new install.

Upon investigating, I've noticed that the Browse Packages menu item now points to "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/MacOS/data/Packages" as opposed to what it used to (and where my packages are still present), which is "/Users/xxxxx/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/Packages".

I feel like I should just copy the folder from one place to another, but I don't want to create a mess.

How do I get everything back to it's original state where my customizations are read?

Some additional info about my mac and ST3 (maybe relevant):

Answer 1

Sublime has an internal notion of where it's Data directory should be located, which is based on the operating system that you're using but resides somewhere in your home directory. The Data directory is the place where things like packages that you install and your User package (which contain your settings) is located, among other things.

If you create a folder named Data in the same location as the sublime text binary, that location becomes the Data directory instead of the default.

This is how the Windows portable version of Sublime works, and although it is not documented, it also works under MacOS and Linux (additionally the folder has to have the proper case of Data if your file system is case sensitive, which is not the default on MacOS or Windows).

The fastest expedient would be to quit sublime, and then rename /Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/MacOS/data to /Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/MacOS/data_old and restart. That should get you back your settings as they previously existed.

Once you've done that you can see if anything inside of the data_old/Packages folder is anything you care about and copy it to the appropriate location.