[thx2099100]

well that the theorical rules, in practice things can vary wildly. expescially on which prefecture/department you have to apply from.

As another commenter said the time can be reduced to 2 year before you can apply but that doesn't mean much. From personal experience, I've been living in france for about 8 years now and everytime I have to deal with immigration services it can be a nightmare.

here is one: after arriving when my visa comme close to an end by a few month I aplied to get a 1 year residency card, I got that card 2 years later just before I got my first diploma.

every 3 months I would have to go to the prefecture at 6/7AM wait outside in the cold only to be told every now and then at 4pm sorry you're not going to pass today try again tommorow. why did I have to go every 3 month? well to give that the exact same papers I gave them the time before, If you didn't have them on you that day because you didn't think you would need to have a copy of the papers you've already given well that too bad for you. after 1year and a half of this, the person with whom I was having the apointement asked by I was here because apparently they can't find my folder. expect I have in my hand a document from this same prefecture aknowledging that I deposited my document and that I can legally stay for the next 3 months (and copies of the previous ones), of course I had to give them on the stop every document they needed or go back and wait for another apointement where you would have to explai the situation once a gain. this meant that every time I had to go to the prefecture I had a backpack on my back with every document I had on my house that I thought could remotly be relevant, because the official list of require documents is for indicative purposes only and they can ask you for a lot more on case to case basis.

second anecdote, if you have a foreign driving living from a country with which france has an agreement with. you have exchange it for a french one once you start working withing the limit of 1 year. At the time I had to the only way to do it is by getting an apointement online, expect the website to get the apointement form is closed, it opne for less than 5 min while crashing continully on a sunday at midnight, after trying for I few month I sent emails explaining the situation -> no reponse and went in person to the prefecture only to be told sorry that's not our problem and was given no clue on how to try to fix this. thanks to covid the process for converting driving licenses is now fully online, I aplied when they first announced this beginning of last summer, I'm still waiting for any news positive or negative.