Can I move my Lightroom Library.lrlibrary to an external drive?

[daerp]

I've discovered that Lightroom CC (after migration of my 'classic' catalog, put a catalog Lightroom Library.lrlibrary in my user/Pictures folder. It is more than 25 Gb and I really don't want it sitting on my laptop. I've copied it to an external drive. So, can I safely delete it from my laptop Pictures folder? Does Lightroom CC need to know where that catalog is? What's it for? I can't see how to set a location for this catalog in LR CC's preferences.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen · Accepted solution]

No, at this point in time, you can move the originals to another drive but the Lightroom Library has to be on the boot drive. Hopefully that'll become smarter in future. You might be able to get around it using a symlink, but that would be very unofficial.

[Turkat]

Any progress on this option?  I have Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.2 installed from the Mac App store.  I never had Lightroom Classic that I had to mitigate.  But, the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary is still taking up 16GB on my boot drive.  If I try to rename or move then my Albums names are visable but there are no photos.

I spoke with Tech Chat on Adobe who said I should not require that file.  When I informed them about above they left to do research for 20 minutes then abruptly ended the chat 😞

[Omar Alamoudi]

Hello @Victoria Bampton LR Queen,

Do you know if it is possible to change the location of the Ligthroom Library.lrlibrary on the boot drive? 

I would like to change its location for organizational purposes. 

Thanks

[Jim Wilde]

No, it's still not possible to change the location of the Lightroom Library, although I have seen some reports that using a symbolic link to redirect to a different location has been successful, but I have no specific details about that.