Ubuntu One for Rhythmbox

Why are downloaded music files stored in a hidden directory?

Asked by Matt Drake

It seems like the music files should be placed in a location that is easily accessible by the users, such as 'Music', 'Ubuntu One', or a user defined directory. Is there a reason why they're stored in the hidden directory .ubuntuone?

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Answered
For:
Ubuntu One for Rhythmbox Edit question
Assignee:
Stuart Langridge Edit question
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Last reply:
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Stuart Langridge (sil) said : 		#1

This is necessarily a technically complicated answer, sorry.

The Music Store downloads to a specific folder which is individually synchronised with Ubuntu One (a new feature in 10.04 Lucid), rather than to a subfolder of Ubuntu One. For technical reasons, it's not possible to have one synced folder inside another synced folder, and lots of people sync their existing Music folder, which would therefore break if we made the Music Store folder a subfolder of Music. So, the actual folder is hidden in .ubuntuone, but a symlink to that folder is created in the standard freedesktop data storage area for ubuntuone (likely to be .local/share/ubuntuone on your machine) which has a translatable name so that it can be made available in the user's choice of language.

Revision history for this message
Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover) said : 		#2

Created an FAQ out of this question since it's likely to be asked numerous times. :-)
FAQ #1020: “Why are downloaded music files stored in a hidden directory?”.

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