Symbolic links in FL Studio [Windows 10]

If you’re one to live life on the road, but still love to produce music, you understand the difficulties of syncing everything up with your home base studio. (Project files, sounds, VSTs, etc.)

And in all honesty, nothing is worse than these iLoks and eLicensors when trying to get two different set-ups on the go. (Imagine forgetting it at home while you’re on the plane?) I understand companies want to protect them self, but geez!

Anyways, I’ve discovered a helpful tip to get your mobile studio in sync with your home studio. For me, I use Dropbox to achieve this.

I’ll cover this in two parts: Drum kits, and VSTs. (Project files, the .FLP you save your song to, are the same as drum kits!)

Drum Kits in Sync in FL Studio:

This is as simple as creating a drum kits folder in Dropbox, then simply dragging and dropping this into the browser.

For your .FLP files, just create a separate folder for your songs, and make sure when you open a song, it’s from this Dropbox folder!

VSTs in Sync Across Multiple Computers in FL Studio:

With the release of FL Studio 12 came the Plugin Database. A pretty cool approach to organizing/managing your VSTs inside FL Studio.

So, FL Studio reads this Plugin Database inside of one of it’s core folders:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Image-Line\FL Studio 12\Data\Patches\Plugin database

I thought if I simply created a shortcut from Dropbox to this Plugin Database, that everything should work and be in sync! (Wrong!)

For what ever reason, FL Studio does not recognize this shortcut, which is why we need to create a Symbolic Link.

It’s a bit intimidating, but just watch the video above, or really read their instructions closely, and carefully!

How Symbolic Links Work:

You have to open up the Command Line in Administrator Mode. (You do this by hitting the windows button, typing command, then right-clicking on command, and selecting ‘Run in Administrator Mode’, or something similar.)

Now, you just follow FL Studio’s user manual on this topic.

A little run down for you though:

You first start by typing mklink, followed by /D – Usually capitals make a difference on the command line, for example /d could have a different meaning than /D, so use /D!

Next, it asks for two locations: Where you want it to go (Destination), where you want it coming from (Dropbox).

But there’s an important point to mention. You’ll want to add an extra backwards slash (\), then type the folder name you want it to be!

So it would look something like this:

mklink /D "C:\Program Files (x86)\Image-Line\FL Studio 12\Data\Patches\Plugin database\Your New Folder" "C:\Users\{YOUR USERNAME}\Dropbox\Your Source Location"

Like I said, it can be confusing and intimidating, but once you get it, it opens up tons of possibilities on getting organized for you road warriors. (Or just people who use multiple computers!)

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.