How do I change the default path assigned by Lion?

With the Hard Drive connected you can drag the 'new' Pictures folder to the sidebar and also drag off the sidebar the old alias that points to your home folder.

I was wrong about dragging the old icon off the sidebar. You will have to open Finder Preferences, select Sidebar and uncheck Pictures.

Message was edited by: PAHU

I did not misunderstand. I knew exactly what you were asking for and I gave you one workaround to achieve what you asked for. Personally I don't know of a way to change the default alias. At a guess it would require modifying the finder sidebar preference plist.

Well what you could do is this: so you have all the pictures filles in the exteranl drive, you can just make a main file on the external drive called "pictures" and then pin that folder to the sidebar.

I'm not sure why you need to delete the default Pictures folder. Just add the new path to the sidebar, remove the old sidebar alias, and ignore the Pictures folder in your home.

The "default path" is your home folder. There is no other default path for the individual folders within the Home folder.

You might try replacing the default Pictures folder with an alias (or symbolic link) to the new Pictures folder.

Any thoughts on how to get around all these problems?

Move your home folder to the external drive.

I didn't find anything on Apple Support, but lots of hits googling.

Or, searching ASC

There is no path to set.

You could replace those folders with symbolic links to your new folders of the same name. I don't know if they will retain the folder icons or not. The way those pictures seem to work is that if the folder is named for one of the default folders, and you are viewing the user Home folder of the logged in user, then the pictures are attached. If you view another user's home folder, those folders don't have the pictures. If you copy one of those folders outside your home folder, the pictures disappear.

There is nothing you desire that can be changed. There isn't anything to change. The path you seek doesn't exist. The home folder is the home folder.

A symbolic link is the unix version of an alias (mac OS )or a shortcut (windows). It occupies the position of somthing in the file system and points to another location. However, as the link will point to another location, I don't imagine you'll see the icons that you want. They are a part of the Home folder, nothing more, nothing less.

Many tutorials and explanations can be found googling.

In Finder Preferences uncheck Pictures. That will remove the Default entry in the sidebar.

Now click on your external drive and find the folder you stored you pictures in, hopefully it is named Pictures. Then Drag that folder to the sidebar and Drop it. A Shortcut/Alias will be created in the sidebar for that folder.

But you don't have to remane it if you do want to. A Alias/Shortcut will kstill be created with the name of that folder.

If it's not named pictures then you can change that before you drag and drop it. I named mine Pictures M HD 1.

I also left the original in the sidebar, not sure why as there is nothing in it.

The only problem with Renaming it is if your iPhoto Library is looking for that named folder as where all the images are stored.

Message was edited by: Shootist007

See item 2 of vbuilt's post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3742815?answerId=17653938022#17653938022