Move Plugins location without reinstalling the plugins?

[camner]

Lightroom Version Number

9.1

Operating System

1. macOS 10.14 Mojave

John Beardy explains here why he puts his plugins folder in his Dropbox tree so he can keep his plugins up to date on multiple machines simultaneously. That's a great idea!

Is there a way to move the plugins folder to a new location without having to reinstall all the plugins (together with entering all the various serial numbers again)?

 

[johnrellis]

See my reply to your other post: Recover plugins location stored (somewhere?) in Lightroom?

 

[camner]

Thanks, John… This is a great tip, and I will give it a try.

But, if I can do this video in Terminal, shouldn't there be a preferences file buried in ~/Library somewhere that I can edit with Texted it or BBEdit?

 

[johnrellis]

On Mac, you should do "defaults read" and "defaults write" to get the current value of the preferences. While there is a preferences file stored in ~/Library/Preferences, it's not guaranteed to be the most up-to-date version (Mac OS caches application preferences in memory).

 

[camner]

That's good to know. Presumably a restart would force MacOS to write out the cached version to the startup drive, allowing one to edit after a restart (and before opening up LR, of course)?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

My method of storing the plugins in Dropbox is that I moved the Modules folder to Dropbox and then placed a symbolic link to that folder in the default location of both computers. The advantage of doing this is that the plugins are still considered to be in the default location, so if you have a plugin that comes with an installer, it will install automatically in the Modules folder in Dropbox.

 

[camner]

My method of storing the plugins in Dropbox is that I moved the Modules folder to Dropbox and then placed a symbolic link to that folder in the default location of both computers. The advantage of doing this is that the plugins are still considered to be in the default location, so if you have a plugin that comes with an installer, it will install automatically in the Modules folder in Dropbox.

That’s a clever approach. I’ve shied away from symbolic links because I’m afraid that sometime in the future I won’t remember that I’ve done that and then will have a devil of a time troubleshooting, because symbolic links are invisible. So, while I don’t mind mucking around with my system, I try not to do things that I won’t be able later to see what I’ve done. Of course, I write down what I do, but, as always, there’s the issue of being able to find what I’ve written down (there have been times when I’ve been unsuccessful in finding my own notes because the search time I used to find it doesn’t coincide with how I wrote it to begin with!).

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I’ve shied away from symbolic links because I’m afraid that sometime in the future I won’t remember that I’ve done that and then will have a devil of a time troubleshooting, because symbolic links are invisible.

Symbolic links are not invisible. They look the same as an alias.

 

[camner]

Symbolic links are not invisible. They look the same as an alias.

Right you are (but you already knew that!). Thanks.