Working with Peakto with several computers

Working with Peakto with several computers

Peakto lets you choose where its database is located.

By default, Peakto stores its files in the Library/Application Support/Peakto directory of the user account, but this can be changed easily :
  1. either by holding the Option key when launching Peakto. This will bring the following dialog, where the location of the Peakto room folder can be reset
  2. or by opening the Preferences screen of Peakto while the app is running, and changing the  location of the root folder using the same dialog

The Peakto root chooser
In this article, we exploit this possibility in the case of a scenario involving 2 different computers where we want to share the database between the two.
The recommended setup is the following:
  1. Set up the Peakto root on an external drive. We strongly recommend a fast SSD for this purpose to maintain optimal performances when navigating inside Peakto. Lets call it the shuttle drive.
  2. Attach alternatively this shuttle drive to computer 1 and computer 2
  3. When launching Peakto on a computer for the 1st time, hold the Option key and point the root to the root that was created on the shuttle drive (use "Other folder" in the screen above).
You can ingest data that is local to each computer while the shuttle drive is attached.
You can also plug external drives and run the ingestion on any computer with these drives attached
Once connected to a specific computer, all sources that are referenced the other machine will appear offline.


Caveat: It is currently not recommended to ingest sources that are different but share the exact same path on the 2 computers. For example, "/Users/<account_name>/Pictures". This will cause confusion.