In the QSettings Platform-specific notes (http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qsettings.html#platform-specific-notes) the documentation for the windows NativeFormat claims that that the organization keys will be found in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MySoft and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\MySoft. The actual behavior will look for the keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MySoft\OrganizationDefaults and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\MySoft\OrganizationDefaults. See the constructor for QWinSettingsPrivate in qsettings_win.cpp for where “OrganizationDefaults” is appended to the key path. The documentation should be updated to reflect the behavior.