Glossary

Relocate

To relocate is to move something to your external drive and leave a shortcut in its old place, so it still appears, and opens, where it always did.

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To relocate something is to move its contents to your external drive and leave a shortcut in its old place. It frees the space on your Mac without changing where you — or your apps — find things.

In Storage Studio:

  • Relocate in Data Parking moves the items and keeps the folder structure where it was: the folders stay as real folders, and each file inside is replaced by a shortcut to its copy on the drive. Tools that look through the folder still find everything they expect.
  • Moving an app from the Apps window relocates it: the app moves to the drive and a shortcut stays in Applications.
  • Automatic moves relocate old items from the folders your rules watch.

Relocate only works towards a drive — a cloud account can't hold the shortcuts — so Data Parking offers Move or Merge for a cloud account instead. A relocated item can be moved back.

See also: Move, Merge or Relocate · Moving a folder back · Moving an app

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How do I move apps to an external drive on a Mac and still launch them?
Dragging an app to another drive can break it, because macOS expects it in /Applications. Storage Studio relocates the app to your external drive and leaves a shortcut in place, so it still launches normally from Launchpad, Spotlight, and the Dock — and you can move it back in one click.
How do I use an external SSD as extra storage on a MacBook?
Plug in a USB-C or Thunderbolt SSD and let Storage Studio pair it with your internal drive as one workspace. It moves big folders, libraries, and apps to the SSD with a shortcut left behind, so your MacBook behaves like it has a much bigger disk — fast enough to work directly off the external drive.
Can I move my Photos or Final Cut library to an external drive?
Yes — large Photos, Final Cut, and iMovie libraries are common space hogs. Storage Studio relocates them to an external drive while keeping them usable, leaving a shortcut so your apps still find them. Moving a folder to your fast drive keeps its files' modified and created dates, permissions,…
Will moving files to another drive break my apps or Spotlight?
Not the way Storage Studio does it. It leaves a shortcut (symlink) at the original location, so apps, Finder, and Spotlight resolve everything as if it never moved — and the move is fully reversible.

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