Does this still work in Monterrey? (change home folder location)

[1brajesh]

Hi iMac users,

I'm using an external drive for my home folder in Catalina.
Before I upgrade to Monterey, I want to make sure this is still supported.

The setting for this in Catalina is under :

System Preferences → Users & Groups -> unlock -> Advanced Options ->

Here I can choose the home directory to be an external drive.

You can see this article for the screen shots:

Mac Home Folder - macOS File System | Nektony

Learn the Mac folder structure in detail: what files the Home folder stores, how to rename the Home folder, get the tips to work with the Home folder.

nektony.com

Please can you let me know if this is still available in the latest Monterey?

many thanks

 

[Nermal]

The option is still there, but I haven't tested it.

 

[gilby101]

If you do move the home folder, make sure you have another administrator username which does have home folder on system/boot disk. This is in case the external drive does not (for whatever reason) mount at system startup.

My recommendation is not to this. Instead create Aliases inside some or all of your Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Download, etc. folders pointing to folders on the external disk.

 

[Fishrrman]

Like gilby above, I recommend that you DO NOT try to move the home folder.

If it's "getting too big" due to large libraries of stuff INSIDE of it, "move the large libraries" instead.

This is particularly true of things like "movies", "music", and "pictures".

Could you give us a clue as to what stuff in the home folder is taking up all the space?

 

[1brajesh]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Hi @gilby101 and @Fishrrman I currently have my home folder on an external drive on Catalina. I'm ok with disk space, but I just wanted to make sure that when I upgrade to Monterey I don't run into any problems of the external drive not being supported and that the upgrade goes smoothly.

However, reading your comments brings up some new questions for me.

The reason I changed the location of the home folder in my current setup was so that my home folder would be automatically synced to iCloud (desktop/documents).

It sounds like from @gilby101 comment, that it's better to use aliases instead of changing the home folder location?

If I do it with aliases, will the home folder still be synced to iCloud?

Perhaps my new question is, what is the recommended way to use external drives for documents and desktop files, allowing for iCloud sync, given that my onboard SSD is only 256 GB ?