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FeedbackCommunityMember
Inspiring
April 19, 2012

P: Creating Directories in Inappropriate Locations ~/Documents

  • April 19, 2012
  • 48 replies
  • 3647 views

Adobe Lightroom 4 is annoyingly creating a directory in ~/Documents on Mac OS X. For example: /Users/smith/Documents/Adobe. Contained within this Adobe directory is an empty directory named "dynamiclinkmediaserver". This is an inappropriate place to create files or directories of this nature. OS X has other directories that can and should be used for settings, preferences, temporary files, and others of similar nature.These two directories are created every time that Lightroom 4 is launched, even after deletion. Please avoid creating these directories in ~/Documents and put them somewhere else in future patches and versions of Lightroom. I look forward to this annoyance being squashed. Thanks, and keep up the good work otherwise.

    48 replies

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    davemoz-zBjC8b
    Participating Frequently
    September 22, 2016
    This is a problem that has been around for what seems like forever, with not so much as a "we hear you" or a "we're working on it" from Adobe, as always. The same thing happens with Premiere and all of it's "sub-"programs/plugins (Lumetri, Media Encoder) as well as Audition, and After Effects.

    It's a real problem when the largest author of such ubiquitous apps as these has such a blatant disregard for the file structure recommendations of the largest and most ubiquitous operating system company.

    Something needs to change.
    Viktor Edholm
    Viktor Edholm
    Participant
    February 9, 2015



    Lightroom behaves similarly with the Adobe/dynamiclinkmediaserver/ folder. Could this be passed along as well?

    S
    s0ma7
    Participating Frequently
    February 9, 2015
    Apple's guidance on this topic (referenced here):

    It is important to remember that the user domain (/Users) is intended for files created by the user. With the exception of the ~/Library directory, your application should never install files into the user's home directory. In particular, you should never install files into a user's Documents directory or into the /Users/Shared directory. These directories should only be modified by the user.

    Even if your application provides clip art or sample files that the user would normally manipulate, you should place those files in either the local or user's Library/Application Support directory by default. The user can move or copy files from this directory as desired. If you are concerned about the user finding these files, you should include a way for the user to browse or access them directly from your application's user interface.
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    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    June 11, 2014
    ah so. i guess *i* read too fast and didn't understand the significance of your first sentence. apologies. mea culpa.
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    LRuserXY
    Known Participant
    June 10, 2014
    Be assured that I read Jons problem attentively. Yes, I understood that he was writing about Mac OS X. And I know that Mac OS has no drive letters.

    I simply added that LR is doing something very similar on Windows 7, i.e. placing some temporary and/or configuration files (not clear what it is) in a directory which has a) a similar subdirectory structure ("Adobe/dynamiclinkmediaserver") and b) is in the wrong place for such things.

    I made that post to point out that something basic may not be right here independent of the operating system LR is running on.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    June 10, 2014
    read more attentively and you'll see Jon said he's running Mac OS X. there is no "C:" on the Mac. our hard drives are called cryptic things like "Macintosh HD."
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    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    June 10, 2014
    i'm far less concerned with the creation of harmless folders in stupid places than i am with the dynamiclinkmediaserver process eating all my CPU cycles. i neither shoot nor edit video, yet this process, which i've read is a video rendering thing that only runs when you try to edit video, seems to start sometimes when i'm using Lightroom and proceeds to consume 95% of my MacBook Pro (Retina)'s CPU cycles (typical Adobe to-he**-with-the-end-user-and-especially-if-they're-running-a-Macintosh behavior). erroneous folders bother me a lot less than my computer being slowed to a crawl by a process i don't want and don't use.
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    LRuserXY
    Known Participant
    April 19, 2012
    Same for Windows 7: C:\Users\_username_\Documents\Adobe\dynamiclinkmediaserver.

    This is strange because normally LR puts everything correctly in C:\Users\_username_\AppData\Local\Adobe (temporary things like caches) or C:\Users\_username_\AppData\Roaming\Adobe (configuration, preferences, templates, etc.).

    Is there a specific reason that dynamiclinkmediaserver is in the user's documents area?

    P.S. You created a duplicate problem - you should perhaps delete it.
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