MacOS – Cannot rename Pictures folder

macos

I have a cloud drive folder where I store my documents, pictures, etc. I want to change the documents, pictures, etc in home to point to my cloud drive folder. I was able to rename the Documents folder just using sudo mv and then create a symbolic link for the cloud drive Documents folder, but for some reason I cannot mv/rename the Pictures folder. I always get "Operation not permitted".

I already moved the photo library bundle out to another location and set that as the system photos library in the Photos app.

Best Answer

If you are not using iCloud sync - game on. Hard link / sym link - unix filesystem is a unix filesystem.

If you are using iCloud, it intercepts the filesystem IO at a low level and I try not to mess with the folders Apple makes In this general case since as soon as you update the OS or some software makes assumptions about what folders exist, then things break.

I love storing my main photo library on secondary storage so you’re on the right track there.

What’s stopping you from making a pictures folder in the Documents folder and just using that? If I understand you have a Pictures folder as well already in iCloud so just updating your finder sidebar and recent locations to be there would get all the apps to use the new cloud pictures. Maybe I’m just not seeing the case where something can’t find your new Pictures folder or what’s failing in your mv command or attempts to remove the user folders.

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MacOS – Move ‘Pictures’, ‘Documents’, ‘Movies’ etc folders

Art,

Do you have this working successfully?

Have you tried hiding the folders using something like:

chflags hidden ~/Documents

Then creating a link to it such as (in Terminal):

cd ~
mkdir stuff
cd stuff
ln -s ~/Documents

I believe that this will hide the ~/Documents folder from the Finder but it will still be there so anything writing to it will work OK. In addition you will see the link in ~/stuff...

MacOS – Symbolic linking to Photos from another user

The iPhoto library is a package container not really a single file. There are .plist, .db and other files in the package that might get altered differentially when you open via the different accounts. This might contribute to the problems people mentioned. Crazy idea, and I haven't tried it, but it might be better to recreate the package content on the new account using symbolic links to the folders that contain the actual photos on the old account. This way all the .plist, .db and related files in the package can remain local to the new account, but you accomplish your goal of not copying the actual photos. I definitely would back up the library before giving this a try.

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MacOS – Move ‘Pictures’, ‘Documents’, ‘Movies’ etc folders

MacOS – Symbolic linking to Photos from another user

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