Import & Export from Photo Booth

Occasionally I want to import or export the photos from macOS’s Photo Booth app. Here’s a reminder on how to do it.

The images are stored in your home directory. Look for ~/Pictures/Photo Booth Library in Finder.

Export

Right-click the file, and select Show Package Contents.

Copy the images in the Pictures directory and the recents.plist file.

Import

To import to an ‘empty’ instance of Photo Booth, you can copy and paste the files to the same locations that they were copied from.

To import to an instance that already has saved pictures, you’ll need to merge the old and new recents.plist files. Each file in the Pictures directory needs a corresponding line in recents.plist.

e.g.

  <string>Photo on 26-12-2016 at 22.34.jpg</string>