How to apply `.mc/ini` file?

I installed Midnight Commander and tried to change the colour scheme, but unfortunately, it doesn't apply the ~/.mc/ini file.

It's Midnight Commander 4.8.1, on Ubuntu 12.04. When I installed it, it didn't have the .mc folder, so I had to create it first. I've searched the internet and found nothing useful.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this?

The configuration is stored in

$HOME/.config/mc/

In your case edit the file $HOME/.config/mc/ini. You can check which files are actually read in by midnight-commander using strace:

strace -e trace=open -o mclog mc

Try to edit settings before you launch mc itself, using nano or any other editor (but not the mcedit). Looks like mc saves current (at the launch time) setup settings each time you quit the file manager.

mc/mcedit has a config option called auto_save_setup which is enabled by default. This option automatically saves your current setup upon exiting. The problem occurs when you try to edit ~/.config/mc/ini using mcedit. It will overwrite whatever changes you made upon exiting, so you must edit the ~/.config/mc/ini using a different editor such as nano.

Source: https://linux.die.net/man/1/mc (search for "Auto Save Setup")