How can I stop the Books App from making another copy of my audiobooks into its library?

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Level 1

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How can I stop the Books App from making another copy of my audiobooks into its library?

After many years of using an old 2009 iMac, I recently moved to a newer model running Ventura. I have a bunch of audiobooks I purchased over the years which I had added to my old Mac in m4b format. I just imported all my audiobooks to Books and suddenly I lost 100GB of space in my disk. As it turns out, Books made a copy of every single file into its own library. These are the exact same files! No changes made, just copied them instead of using the original location for the same file.

How can I stop this behaviour? In Music App there is a setting to stop Music copying songs to Music library. I do not see this option in Books.

Anybody has a trick? I am running out of space on my 1TB disk because MAC OS wants to have two copies of every file :-(.

iMac Pro, macOS 13.4

Posted on May 26, 2023 10:02 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Old Toad

Level 10

210,615 points

Jun 6, 2023 11:35 AM in response to dafnedr

The audiobook files are stored here:

There's no way around it. So after importing your audiobook files into the Books library delete the originals from the hard drive. When you're done with the book you can delete it from the library and it will end up in a folder in the Trash bin where you can recover them and store on an external drive if desired. OR, if they were originally on an external drive just leave them there.

In any case we're forced to store the books on our internal boot drive. Only have 59 GB in my library currently but have removed 268 GB of books after having listened to them and stored them on an external drive.

I've tried moving the Audiobook folder to an external drive and putting a hard link and then an alias in its place with no success. If you find a way to store them externally come back and let us know.

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Answer 2

Nov 16, 2023 8:58 PM in response to dafnedr

A older thread, but just for the record...

Unfortunately, this alias trick doesn't work. It copies the file linked in the alias to the library's storage location, not just the alias. So you don't save any space by putting the source files on an external drive and using aliases.

Come on Apple, fix this huge missing feature.

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Answer 3

Tesserax

Level 10

152,320 points

Jun 6, 2023 11:19 AM in response to dafnedr

You're very welcome! I'm glad you got it worked out in spite of my not-so-accurate steps. ;)

Great job getting this accomplished! ... and for providing your final solution. I'm sure it will help others who may come across the same issue.

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Answer 4

dafnedr Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 6, 2023 7:48 AM in response to Tesserax

Thank you very much for the detailed reply! This trick does accomplish what I want: populates Books with my audiobooks without creating a copy of the files.

I tried this today and I have the following comments:

The Command+L shortcut didn't work for me but I was able to create the aliases with a right click. The good news is that I was able to select multiple files and it would create an alias for each with a single click.
However, when importing the aliases into Books this step didn't work in bulk. I had to import each alias for each file, one by one. I tried importing the folder that contains all aliases and nothing happens, it doesn't import anything. It also doesn't allow me to select multiple individual files. I can only import the aliases one by one.
Some audiobooks have multiple m4b files. After importing all of the aliases for one book (one at a time), I had to restart Books to show me all files for the audiobook. Otherwise I would only see one track when I started playing the audiobook.

As mentioned, some of the books in my computer have one m4b file for each chapter. For large books, this can be a lot of aliases! Importing each alias for each chapter one by one takes a long time... it is not really an easy fix.

Again, thank you very much for the reply @Tesserax.

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Answer 5

Tesserax

Level 10

152,320 points

May 26, 2023 10:08 AM in response to dafnedr

Unfortunately, AFAIK there isn't a built-in option in the Books app to stop it from copying files to its library, like the Music app. However, you can use the following workaround to save some storage space:

1. Move your audiobooks to a designated folder (e.g., "Audiobooks") in a location of your choice.

2. Create an alias (also known as a shortcut) for each of your audiobook files:

a. Click on the audiobook file.

b. Press the following keys: "Command + L" (⌘L) to create an alias for the file.

c. Repeat this process for all your audiobook files within the folder.

3. Import your aliases into the Books app:

a. Open the Books app.

b. Go to "File" in the top menu, and click on "Add to Library" (or press "Command + O" on your keyboard).

c. Locate and select the alias files in the folder you created earlier, and click on "Open" to add them to the Books app.

By doing this, the Books app will reference the original files through the created aliases without duplicating the files in its library.

Please note that you need to keep the original files in the designated folder to avoid breaking the links to the aliases. If you move or delete the original files, the aliases will no longer work in the Books app.

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How can I stop the Books App from making another copy of my audiobooks into its library?

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