Black Manticore

Change location of Kodi's data directory (workaround)

by lunarg on May 5th 2015, at 13:05

By default, Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), stores its data directory in the user's home folder (Mac/Linux) or roaming profile (Windows). Sometimes, this may not be desirable, especially when you have only a limited amount of space available on that particular drive (such as having a Windows installation on an small SSD). In that case, you may want to move the entire data directory (including the profiles, thumbnail caches and database files) to another drive.

There are various ways to achieve this, but I found out the most easiest (and also complete way) is to simply move the entire folder to another partition or disk, then symlink that folder to its original location. That way, you won't have to change any configuration files, and the complete variable data will be kept at another location (another partition or disk).

How this is done, depends on whether you're running Mac/Linux or Windows, but the result is in fact the same.

Windows

The default location is kept in %APPDATA%\Kodi. Move the folder in its entire (not just the contents) to the new location. Then open an elevated command prompt, and create the directory symlink:

cd \%APPDATA%
mklink /D Kodi "D:\path\to\KodiKodi"

Mind the quotes if you have spaces in your new folder path.

Mac/Linux

Mac and linux both use the UNIX-based ln command to create symlinks.

The default locations are:

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Kodi
Linux: ~/.kodi

The default location is kept in %APPDATA%\Kodi. Move the folder in its entire (not just the contents) to the new location. Then open a shell (Terminal), and create the symlink:

For Mac:

cd ~/Library/Application Support
ln -s "/path/to/Kodi" Kodi

For linux:

cd ~
ln -s "/path/to/kodi" .kodi

Mind the quotes if you have spaces in your new folder path.

Move UserData only

The same method applies if you just want to move the Kodi/UserData folder. This folder basically contains all your user data, such as settings, libraries, and other things.

Note that plugins that were not included by default are not installed in this folder, but in the main data directory (which is why I explained to symlink that folder instead of just the UserData folder). Also, in case of an SSD, I recommend moving the entire root folder, as Kodi creates log files in the root data directory.