Change photos locations in Photos app

[kojotuse]

Hi,
I would like to use Photos app to organize my shots. I went through few cases and it should work for me. But there is last one which I can't pass.

I'm using 2018 15" MBP with macOS 10.15.3 and Photos 5.0, all system updates applied. For some reasons I would like to store my photos not inside Photos app database, so I unchecked copy to database option in Photos preferences. Currently I'm storing my photos in few folders in path ~/Pictures/Fotos/ and I imported it to Photos app. In future I plan to buy NAS server and then move there my photos. So I started to searching for option of changing files linked to Photos app database locations. No such thing under UI. So I digged through Photos library folder and there is file "Photos.sqlite". I made a copy of it and opened it under https://sqlitebrowser.org/ . It is sqlite database with dozens of tables but 1 is interesting - "ZGENERICASSETS" it contains all photos informations including columns "ZDIRECTORY" with photo directory path and "ZFILENAME" with photo filename. I closed Photos app, edited ZDIRECTORY column in Photos.sqlite backup and replaced original Photos.sqlite with changed one. I moved photos to new folder, opened Photos app and on specific photo I clicked show in finder, but app can't find it.

Do you know hot to change photos location in Photos app library?

 

[kojotuse]

I found workaround. Steps to reproduce:
1. Create new Photos library and imported 2 photos from directory ~/Pictures/Foto/Test . Finder can show filed form two finger click menu in Photos app.
2. Close Photos app
3. Move directory ~/Pictures/Foto/Test to ~/Pictures/Test
4. Create symbolic link in terminal:

ln -s ~/Pictures/Test ~/Pictures/Foto/Test

5. Lunch Photos app. Finder can show files!

I need to test if it works with network mounted drive.

 

[kojotuse]

Works with network shared drive as well:
1. Import to Photos new pictures from ~/Pictures/Foto/NetworkTest
2. Close Photos
3. Move to network drive, in my case Windows 7 machine C:\NetworkShare\NetworkTest
4. Share C:\NetworkShare on Windows device with read/write access
5. In finder press CMD+K and connect to network share, in my case:

smb://STRONGHOLD/NetworkShare

login with windows credentials
6. Create new symbolic link:

ln -s /Volumes/NetworkShare/NetworkTest ~/Pictures/Foto/NetworkTest

7. Run Photos app, pictures can be show in Finder.

I tried to export all 4 pictures placed in my library (2 from local symbolic link and 2 from network). With pictures from network Photos app show window that it can't find it asking me to point directory where those pictures should be, so I pointed to network symbolic link and export passed.

I don't hame NAS drive now, but it should work the same way.

 

[NoBoMac]

Sounds right. I keep my Photos library (all of it) on an external SSD and have a symbolic link to it.

Only issue I run into is trying to sync pictures to iOS devices via the Finder "iTunes Sync", even with system library switch set to use it. No big deal for me as I only sync over some photos of my family and backgrounds I've created/acquired: I export those to my Pictures folder and sync from there.

 

[kojotuse]

I also have some photos from other people collected in separate folders. I'm planning to import them to Photos library without copy to library and in the future move them to NAS and use symbolic links.