Parallel Preferences

You can access parallel preferences in the general preferences for MATLAB. To open the Preferences dialog box, use any one of the following:

On the Home tab in the Environment section, click Parallel > Parallel Preferences
Click the desktop pool indicator icon, and select Parallel preferences.
In the command window, type
```
preferences
```
In the navigation tree of the Preferences dialog box, click Parallel Computing Toolbox.

The parallel preferences dialog box looks something like this:

You can control the following with your preference settings:

Default Cluster — This is the default on which a pool is opened when you do not otherwise specify a cluster.
Preferred number of workers — This specifies the number of workers to form a pool, if possible. The actual pool size might be limited by licensing, cluster size, and cluster profile settings. See Pool Size and Cluster Selection.
Automatically create a parallel pool — This setting causes a pool to automatically start if one is not already running at the time a parallel language is encountered that runs on a pool, such as:
With this setting, you never need to manually open a pool using the parpool function. If a pool automatically opens, you can still access the pool object with gcp.
Shut down and delete a parallel pool — The pool's IdleTimeout property setting causes a parallel pool to automatically shut down if the pool has been idle for the specified amount of time. Whenever the pool is used (for example, with a parfor or parfeval), the timeout counter is reset. When the timeout is about to expire, a tooltip on the desktop pool indicator warns you and allows you to reset the timer.

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