Why is it BOINC client can't be installed on a single machine with it's own preferences tied to that machine only? As it stands there is a global preference that overrides all clients on all machines. I understand there are workarounds, but it seems ridiculous to have to jump through hoops to accomplish this. I feel there would be more participation and retention if this glaring issue were addressed. I myself have seven different machines and would gladly participate in multiple different tasks at the same time if it were not such a pita.

If there were more available venues to choose from besides default, home, work and school it would be more acceptable. I assume the remaining venues are tied to specific projects. Using this solution I would get control of four of my seven machines without "global preferences" making decisions.

Local computing preferences have been available since a long time.
BOINC Manager->Options->Computing preferences. Setting these to local ones, saves them to global_prefs_override.xml for that one PC only.

See https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/preferences for more information.

That would work...for control of four machines. Is it possible for more venues to be offered to cover more?

Setting local preferences on all machines lets you have as many different lots of settings as you want. Project websites only allow, home, school, home and one other whose name I forget.

In reply to Dave's message of 18 Mar 2026:

Setting local preferences on all machines lets you have as many different lots of settings as you want. Project websites only allow, home, school, home and one other whose name I forget.

They are default, home, work and school. Going to experiment with the others to see if they will let me override their intended tasks.

This is all less than intuitive, but I figured it out. You have to start with the "global preferences" page and create/enable the different venues. You then need to go to the project site, select view computers/details in order to assign that pc's specific venue. I found that putting a piece of tape on each machine and labeling it which venue it is assigned will likely prevent future confusion.

Edit: It appears you can indeed use the other (planet) venues after altering the values/tasks.

You started this thread with the question: Why is it BOINC client can't be installed on a single machine with it's own preferences tied to that machine only?
I've answered you that it can, using the local preferences, accessible via BOINC Manager, be it Simple or Advanced View.

So why are you still continuing over the global preferences set via the website?

The local preferences override all of the global preferences.
They're set via BOINC Manager.
They work for the machine you set them on only.
See https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/Editing_computing_preferences_with_the_BOINC_Manager