Important: Unless otherwise noted, not tested on version >= 5

Change path to collections on removable media

If you change the path to a collection on removable media digiKam does not tell you it is missing. It still shows the albums and their thumbnails (because digiKam stores those locally) but it does not show you the usual options or actions in the menus. For example, the Open with menu shown by right clicking on an image does not show the viewing applications.

Settings -> Configure digiKam -> Collections shows all your collections on removable media but it if you changed their paths, it does not display them. The paths are easily fixed by manually editing the SQLite database.

There are several ways to do this, including the program DB Browser for SQLite1. All you have to do is update the columns identifier and specificPath of the table AlbumRoots to reflect the new path of the root of your collection. You can get the UUID of the disk by browsing /dev/disks/by-uuid

Then save the changes and start digiKam.

Importing database to a new digiKam installation

Start digiKam, the first-time-run wizard/assistant starts. Click Next.

Input the path to the main directory where you store images. In the second text box, input the path to the directory where the file digikam.db lives, not the path to the file itself. In other words, input the basename of the absolute path to the digikam.db file. Click Next

Configure the rest of the settings as needed. See Change path to collections on removable media if the paths of the collections were modified.

Non-simultaneous multiple instances

Version >= 5.0.0

Close digiKam and edit digikam configuration file, whose default path is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/digikamrc

Database Name=/path/to/dir/containing/database/file/
Database Name Face=/path/to/dir/containing/facedatabase/file/
Database Name Thumbnails=/path/to/dir/containing/thumbnaildatabase/file/

Note the trailing slashes and the fact that all paths can be the same.

Then start digiKam.

Note: Do not use command line option --database-directory, it doesn’t seem to work for this purpose.

Version <5.0.0

Close digiKam and edit digikam configuration file, whose default path is $HOME/.kde/share/config/digikamrc

Database Name=/path/to/dir/containing/database/file/
Database Name Thumbnails=/path/to/dir/containing/thumbnaildatabase/file/

Note the trailing slashes and the fact that both paths can be the same.

Then start digiKam.

Note: Do not use command line option --database-directory, it doesn’t seem to work for this purpose.

Database cleanup

The program cleanup_digikamdb performs cleanup of any/both of the two digikam’s database files. However, it doesn’t seem to remove entries of images of removed collections. Such entries may need to be removed directly from the database.


  1. Package sqlitebrowser on Fedora 23. ↩