Moving thumbnails.db to an external drive

[Thomas]

Another approach might be the following:

 1. Stop DK
 2. Move thumbnails.db to new location
 3. Inside the original folder, create a symlink to the new location.
    (command: cd old/path && ln -s /new/path/thumbnails.db)
 4. Start DK, verify it works. It ought to work.


BR


On 2026-07-31 18.45, Andrew Goodbody wrote:
> I do not see a way to do this from within digikam so I would try this:
>
> 1) Exit digikam
> 2) Copy thumbnails.db to new location.
> 3) Find your digikamrc file (on Linux it is ~/.config/digikamrc but I 
> am not sure where it would be on a Mac but this is documented 
> somewhere) and take a backup copy.
> 4) Edit digikamrc in a text editor and alter the path for the entry 
> 'Database Name Thumbnails', which is in the section headed '[Database 
> Settings]', so that it points to the new location of thumbnails.db
> 5) Start digikam and ensure thumbnails are working OK, maybe add an 
> image so that the thumbnails database will be updated.
> 6) Exit digikam
> 7) Check access time or just the size in bytes of thumbnails.db in new 
> location to ensure that was the one being used.
> 8) If all is OK delete thumbnails.db from original location.
>
> I am not sure how stable this is and whether anything would cause 
> digikam to overwrite the change to digikamrc but I think it should be OK.
>
> Andrew
>
> PS Not tested and you should proceed at your own risk. YMMV
>
> On 31/07/2026 14:58, Ronald Orenstein wrote:
>> My thumbnails.db file is now 35GB in size, and I would like to move 
>> it to an external SSD.  I run Digikam on a mac, and the SSD is 
>> formatted in ExFAT.  Can this be done, and if so, how?
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any help!
>>
>> Ron Orenstein
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