Unable to understand the instructions for building a symlink

Question

I am not able to solve my problem using the instructions below:

Change the default Quicktime screen recording cache in OSX Mojave to be on an external flash drive instead?

I'm trying to change where QuickTime saves its temporary recordings. I'm pretty sure I have the symlinks set up correctly and still when I do a screen recording, the space on my hard drive decreases quickly and the space on my external hard drive stays the same.

When I execute these commands:

$ cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/
$ ls -alF 

I get:

drwx------  12 kylefoley  staff   384 Apr 24 21:30 ./
drwx------   5 kylefoley  staff   160 Apr 24 21:27 ../
lrwxr-xr-x   1 kylefoley  staff    31 Dec 24  2014 .CFUserTextEncoding@ -> ../../../../.CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@  1 kylefoley  staff  6148 Apr 24 21:30 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x   4 kylefoley  staff   128 May 20  2015 CloudKit/
lrwxr-xr-x   1 kylefoley  staff    19 Dec 24  2014 Desktop@ -> ../../../../Desktop
drwx------   3 kylefoley  staff    96 Dec 24  2014 Documents/
lrwxr-xr-x   1 kylefoley  staff    21 Dec 24  2014 Downloads@ -> ../../../../Downloads
drwx------  30 kylefoley  staff   960 Apr 24 21:31 Library/
lrwxr-xr-x   1 kylefoley  staff    18 Dec 24  2014 Movies@ -> ../../../../Movies
lrwxr-xr-x   1 kylefoley  staff    17 Dec 24  2014 Music@ -> ../../../../Music
lrwxr-xr-x   1 kylefoley  staff    20 Dec 24  2014 Pictures@ -> ../../../../Pictures

I should also add that I'm sure I have the final recording going to my external hard drive. What I really want to know is how can I find out for certain that where my temporary QuickTime files are going? Also, I was successful in building a symlink that automatically put my screenshots on my harddrive so I sort of know what I'm doing.

UPDATE ##################

$ ls -alF /Users/kylefoley/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/
total 16

drwx------   4 kylefoley  staff   128 Apr 24 23:36 Autosave Information/

Answer 1

Depending on the version of macOS you're running, the temporary files for a screen recording may be stored in different locations by default.

• Later macOS use screencapture and the temporary recordings are stored in ~/Library/ScreenRecordings.
• Earlier macOS use QuickTime and the temporary recordings are stored in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave\ Information.

In the following commands, replace /path/to/recordings with one of the above paths depending on your version of macOS. You can also safely run each command twice with each of the paths above to symlink both folders to the same destination.

---

1. Delete the existing folder to be able to create the symlink in its place.

   rm -rf /path/to/recordings
   

2. Create the symlink.

   ln -s /path/to/destination /path/to/recordings
   

   where /path/to/destination is the path to the folder you want the temporary recordings saved to instead of their normal location. See How can I create a symbolic link in Terminal?.