Mac OS X Lion / Mountain Lion Photo Booth Plist Rebuild/Repair Script

Comments:: 14

Tags:: Shell Scripting; PHP; Photo Booth; Mac OS X; Code Snippet

By Jesse Donat on: Jul. 27, 2011 (Updated: Sep. 10, 2012)

A while ago I upgraded from an aging MacBook Pro to a much more nubile MacBook Air. Delighted with the Air in every way, the only problem I encountered was the backup of the MacBook Pro I made I sold it was seemingly corrupted and would not mount.

I did though have a backup of my Photo Booth Photos and wanted them recognized by the application. Admittedly, it is simply a matter of entering them into the Recents.plist file, but having several hundred photos across three operating systems and three naming schemes (was that really necessary, Apple?) getting these into the proper order by hand would have been a huge burden.

Alas! A use for my PHP skills! I sat down and wrote a simple PHP based shell script you can use to create a new plist file with your images properly ordered.

This will back up your current Recents.plist as Recents.plist.bk.[time] so if you decide to roll it back, it will be there for you!

Usage

To Begin With

Ensure all photos and movies you wanted loaded into Photo Booth are located in your Pictures/Photo Booth Library/Pictures/ folder.
Ensure the Photo Booth Application is closed to avoid overwriting our changes.

Simple Method

Added September 10, 2012
Open Terminal and run the following command.

curl -Ls https://raw.github.com/gist/1108691/Photobooth_rebuild.sh.php | php

Git Method

Simply executing

git clone https://gist.github.com/1108691.git PhotoBoothRepair

should both download it and set it executable.

Non-Git Method

Save the script somewhere accessible to you via Terminal.
Navigate in Terminal to the directory where you saved the shell script
Set the file executable by running
```
chmod +x Photobooth_rebuild.sh.php
```
Execute the shell script
```
./Photobooth_rebuild.sh.php
```
All Done - Fire up Photo Booth to see our results!

Known Limitations

All Leopard format names arrive first simply for lack of anything to go on as they’re just numbered.

Please comment, I welcome feedback! Feel free to fork this code on Github - I'm open to any updates. I wrote it for my personal use but have been very pleased with the number of people that it has helped!

Comment by: Mark on Aug. 19, 2011

Can you explain us with print screens or something? I don't understand the steps. I know where is "terminal" and simple details but i don't understand whats i have to type to terminal.

Comment by: Jesse G. Donat on Aug. 24, 2011

While I do think it’s pretty self-explanatory, I have though for your sake changed the visual style of the Terminal commands to be more obvious – I hope that helps.

This guide looks pretty useful for getting you up to speed on basic Terminal usage, I hope it helps.

Comment by: Federico on Aug. 24, 2011

I LOVE YOU!!!!! You're a genius!

Comment by: Jon Zantua on Nov. 25, 2011

I can't understand terminal please help me with screen shots please? Having problems with photobooth :>

Comment by: ZorkFox on Dec. 2, 2011

Genius. Thank you, sir!

Comment by: Kris on Jan. 14, 2012

Great work, retrieved my 13 year old daughter's Photo Booth library dating back to 2006 :) All the best from Kris, Melbourne, Australia.

Comment by: Scott Kennedy on Jan. 21, 2012

Just wanted to say thanks for this. I am a complete novice and manage to follow these instructions. You legend!!!

Comment by: Logan on Jan. 25, 2012

When I attempt to navigate to the script (saved as a .txt) in terminal I get the message "Permission denied"...I am the only account on my macbook and the admin. What am I doing wrong?

Comment by: Austin on May. 7, 2012

I saved it to my home directory so I wouldn't have to bother navigating to it, I changed the path, but it still didn't seem to work, and I don't understand enough coding to know what the error is:

AWMBP:~ austinwismer$ chmod +x Photobooth_rebuild.sh.php
AWMBP:~ austinwismer$ ./Photobooth_rebuild.sh.php
-bash: ./Photobooth_rebuild.sh.php: /usr/bin/php: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted