How to move the SongKong database to a different disk on your Mac

For the most part SongKong does matching on a folder by folder basis and because it is only working on a few folders at any instant in time this means it can usually fix thousands and thousands of songs without using that much of your computers memory.

But it does need to store your file metadata details and details of the progress it is making and this is stored on your disk drive in a database. Compared to memory disk space is cheap and plentiful, a typically computer may have 8GB of memory but 500 GB of disk space.

On OSX the database is always stored in  ~Library:Preferences:SongKong and the Library folder is usually on your local hard drive. If you have a small or full internal hard drive this can present a problem because SongKong does not give you an option to store the database somewhere else.

Empty Database

If the database has just grown too large over time use File:Empty Database to clear it out. Remember that the database is where SongKong stores the modiifed metadata allowing it to Undo Changes, so once you've done emptied it you cannot undo any previous changes.

Move Database

If you simply do not have space on your main drive for the SongKong database using symbolic links as follows:

1. Close SongKong if running
2. Run Application:Utilities:Terminal
3. Enter commands to create new database folder in your chosen location, then remove the old database folder and create a symbolic link file with the same name point to the new location.

If your new location is an external drive then it should be listed under the /Volumes directory, do not use a network directory that will be too slow. In the screenshot below I have given full example for linking to a new Database on a usb stick mounted on OSX as /Volumes/UUI, you just need to change the references to UUI to the correct location for your drive, everything else should be the same.

4. Now start SongKong, it should say its creating a new database.
5. If you like you can check it is done in the right place by running this command from the Terminal, remembering to replace UUI  with the correct path for your system