1 Reply Latest reply: Aug 29, 2014 5:36 AM by Toon61 RSS

    Syncing Bridge CC between computers

    Toon61 Community Member

      Hi all,

       

      Is it possible to sync Bridge CC settings between multiple computers.

      Most other CC apps do, so why not with Bridge. This could be very usefull for Collections, Keywords etc.

       

      Maybe a solution that involves Hazel (yep, I'm on a Mac).

       

      So far I have found nothing satisfying on this subject.

      Or is this something that Adobe is coming up with very soon?!

        • 1. Re: Syncing Bridge CC between computers
          Toon61 Community Member

          After posting this question I was curious to see if I could manage some sort of syncing with Hazel (noodlesoft.com, only for Mac).

          And guess what?

          I did!

           

          At this moment I can sync my Bridge Collections and Keywords file between an iMac and a MacBook Pro via my NAS (but this could also be DropBox or similar).

          What I have done (this is only relevant for people who are using, or wanting to use, Hazel on their Mac(s)):

          I've created a folder on my NAS called 'Bridge InBetween'.

          On both my Macs (iMac and MBPro) I created a rule in Hazel to sync the folder 'Collections' and the file 'Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml' to the folder on the NAS.

          (This folder and file can be found in 'User/yourusername/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Bridge CC')

          Because I do a sync, and not a simple copy that overwrites whatever has the same name, the most up-to-date files are copied and overwritten.

          Then, I let Hazel run a script, again on both Mac's, to check between the local Adobe Bridge folder and the folder on the NAS to see if anything on the NAS is newer than on the local Adobe Bridge folder.

          If so, then these files are copied from the NAS to the local Adobe Bridge folder, overwriting any existing file(s).

          It is that plain simple, and it works for me because I have both Mac's set up in exactly the same way. This is important for syncing the Collections.

          The Collections in Bridge are just plain XML files (e.g. collection.filelist) in which Bridge stores the name and path of a file in that collection.

          In my case it means that any file in a collection has the same path on both Macs, as long as this file is on a NAS Share or inside my daily (local) work folder, which is synchronised between my Macs thanks to a very usefull NAS utility.

          If you must deal with Macs that are not setup exactly the same (username, folder locations and names etc.), you'll have to edit the Collections file to match it.

          And because these are XML files, a simple 'search&replace' might do the trick.

           

          Bottom Line:

          The syncing works for me because of two identical configured Macs. If this is not the case, then the syncing of Collections can be very hard and time consuming (changing pathnames).

          Syncing of the Keywords or even a Bridge Workspace should be no problem, because there is no pathname or whatever stored in these files.

           

          I hope someone benefits form my findings.