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The problem: of all the components a virtual instrument can have, its sample library is by far the one that needs the most storage space and the one that needs fastest access.

Native Access lets you set a different location for any new stuff you install, but what about the products you already installed and you'd like to move to a different drive? You could uninstall and... wait, nope. It's 2021 and Native Access still has no product uninstaller.

We need a method to move already installed sample libraries, without breaking the installation.

The solution: Mac OS has the ability to make programs believe content is in a certain place, when it's actually in a different location. Programs have no way to know something has been moved to a different place. For those programs, nothing has changed.

This ability is called “symbolic links”, Symlinks for short.

1 – Where's my stuff?

According to Native Instruments documentation, content is stored by default in:

Macintosh HD (or OSX) > Users > Shared > [product name]

Source: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210291865-How-to-Uninstall-Native-Instruments-Software-from-a-Mac-Computer

So, unless you changed that location in Native Access preferences, this is where your big fat content files are. That's what we're relocating.

2 – Relocating

In this example, we're relocating Drum Lab Library, which is in the Shared (Compartido in Spanish) folder.

Now, we're moving the folder. Notice that by default, if you drag a folder from “Shared” location, it won't move, it will copy. So you need to Cmd + Drag to move instead.

3 – Creating the Symlink

Now for the nerdy part. You'll have to open the Terminal (yeah, that 1980's command line interface) and write something, but it's just one line and it's very, very simple.

Notice in the video that I'm opening the Terminal from the origin folder, not the destination folder.

Then we'll have to write there “ln -s destination-folder origin-folder”

Good, but what's "destination folder" full name? How do we know the full destination path? Ah, that's easy. You just write “ln -s “ (leave a trailing space) and then drag the destination folder to the Terminal window. OSX will write it for you.

Nice, but what about the origin folder? Well, you can do the same, or you can just press space and then full stop. A full stop means “here” in Terminal syntax.

And that's it. Kontakt won't even notice you moved the whole folder.

4 – What if I want to restore?

Easy. Just remove the Symlink file and move the content folder back to its original place.

That's all, folks!

Additional Notes

There are other ways to create symlinks with no Terminal involved. Check this article by Mahesh Makvana for Switching2Mac if you want more details: https://www.switchingtomac.com/tutorials/osx/how-to-create-symlinks-on-your-mac/

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