Other Netflix junction/symbolic link

Hi chaps,

Hoping someone can help with getting my Netflix app to look in a different place for its offline downloads. The tablet/convertible I've installed it on is pretty full and I want to be able to download some stuff for the kids to watch whilst travelling - to date this has necessitated finding the downloads folder, creating separate labelled folders on an SD card and downloading what I can to the internal storage before moving everything to its place on the SD card.

Obviously, this is rather clunky and has the added hassle of having to move things back and forth every time one of them wants to watch something different, not to mention that sometimes this seems to corrupt the downloads for some reason and prevent them being used.

What I'd rather do is tell Netflix to look transparently on the SD card for its offline downloads instead of the internal storage, as there is more space there and I won't have to shuffle files around all the time.

I tried making a symbolic link (and a junction link) using this command line entry:

mklink /j [as well as trying with /d] [...\Netflix downloads folder]\downloads d:\downloads
​

and have tried both with and without the "downloads" folder having been created already in either location. When I then go to download something, I get the error code "DL1-W80070005" and nothing completes, but I can't find anything for this error code online.

Has anyone done this or something similar? Is it even possible?

Cheers in advance!
Squiddy

 

Make sure Netflix is closed. If it still doesn't work, boot into safe mode. Obviously check which "packages" folder it saves to.

move "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Packages\4DF9E0F8.Netflix_mcm4njqhnhss8\LocalState\offlineInfo\downloads" D:\Netflix\downloads
mklink /D "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Packages\4DF9E0F8.Netflix_mcm4njqhnhss8\LocalState\offlineInfo\downloads" D:\Netflix\downloads​

For a techy forum, I'm surprised we don't have a code tag for monospace fonts... @MLyons

 

I got totally lost when i last tried creating junctions and/or symbolic links using the CLI so i cheated and used Symlink Creator.

 

Thanks both for some prompt and useful answers! I'll give the CLI scripts a bash first.

Do I need to do the move AND the mklink? I thought the whole point of the link was to point an existing folder location ie. the Netflix downloads folder to an alternative, such as the D: drive. If I move it, will it not just try and create a new version?

 

Maybe try downloading just one show then doing the move. At least this way the permissions should stay intact.

 

Can't move the folder from the c:\ drive - access is denied, apparently.

 

Are you running CMD as an admin? Did you try in Safe Mode, as an admin?

 

Yeah, logged in as admin user and running from elevated prompt. Have also given myself ownership of the downloads folder and Netflix package folder, but no joy.

EDIT: Just found this and wondering if it's indeed possible at all - https://www.ghacks.net/2017/04/05/where-is-netflix-downloading-shows-to-on-windows-10/

 

From what I've read it is possible but it's a bit of a PITA, four suggestions for how others did it in the comments section of this article.

 

That looks promising - cheers bud. I'm in the middle of a few work bits at the moment but will try again later and post back. It seems the Playon software might be a good long-term alternative but that's running at $40 at the moment (although recordings don't seem to expire).

 

Just to close this one out in case anyone else ever has similar issues, I went for the PlayOn software in the end and it seems to work fine with the limited testing of it I've done so far. Will try the other junction point method when I get a chance but I've just lost my main Windows drive so now need to start a thread on recovering that!

Summary being, if you have £15 or so and can't be doing with the hassle, get PlayOn but be aware that it works in real time so you'll need to plan ahead if travelling and not leave it all to the night before.

 

It's a recorder, rather than a downloader, so whereas with the actual Netflix app (and your limited disk space if you're in the same situation as I am with the tablet effort) you can press Download and queue up as many films etc. as can fit in your storage, with PlayOn, it effectively queues programmes up to play and as they're playing, it saves them to your storage.

Effectively, this means that if you have 4 hours' worth of films to download for a journey, the app will do this as quick as your connection will allow, but PlayOn wil take 4 hrs.