Cisco AnyConnect is one of the most common clients for connecting your machine to the virtual private network (VPN) of your university or company. However, over the GUI you cannot setup multiple VPN connections at same time. When changing from one VPN server to another one, which happens quite a lot in case (thanks to publications hidden behind paywalls), you always need to enter the connection settings again and again.

But you can directly save VPN profile settings on the file system. The settings are stored as XML files in the following directories:

Windows

C:\ProgramData\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client\Profile

MacOS/Linux:

/opt/cisco/anyconnect/profile

To add your own VPN connection, create a profile file, for example work-vpn.xml, and restart the Cisco AnyConnect client:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<AnyConnectProfile xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/encoding/">
  <ServerList>
    <HostEntry>
      <HostName>Name of my VPN connection</HostName>
      <HostAddress>vpn.company.com</HostAddress>
        <User>my.user.name</User>
    </HostEntry>
  </ServerList>
</AnyConnectProfile>

That’s it! Sadly, there seems to be no way to save your password.