The Lightroom mobile apps have become a significant part of the photographic workflow. You may be automatically adding photos shot on your phone, or loading photos from a memory card while traveling. Or perhaps you’re sorting and editing photos loaded from Lightroom Classic. But sooner or later you may find you’re running out of space on your phone or tablet. How can you safely clear space on your device without deleting your photos from the cloud?
Lightroom’s pretty good at automatically clearing its caches when your device starts to run low on space. But if you need to import a large number of photos from a camera or memory card, or you need a large amount of space for another app, you can clear the cache manually.
Check space
First, check how much space Lightroom is actually using, as Lightroom may not be the culprit. You can check this by going to iOS Settings > General > iPhone Storage or Android Settings > Device Maintenance (or Device Care) > Storage. You may be able to free up space by deleting unused apps or movies.
If Lightroom is using up a lot of space, there are a couple of Lightroom Settings that can help:
Clear space
On your Android device, you can make more space by moving the Lightroom data to your expansion storage (SD card). To do so, go to Settings > Device Info & Storage > Use SD Card. Unfortunately there isn’t a similar option for iOS, due to operating system limitations.
Unless you particularly need the originals stored locally (perhaps for editing in Photoshop), ensure Only Download Smart Previews is checked in Settings > Cloud Storage & Sync (iOS) / Settings > Preferences (Android) so that only the smaller Smart Previews are downloaded by default in future.
Finally, you can also can clear Lightroom’s cache using the Settings > Local Storage (iOS) / Settings > Device Info & Storage (Android) > Clear Cache button. Clearing the cache only clears local copies of images that are already safely stored in the cloud. Don’t worry, it doesn’t delete originals that haven’t uploaded yet, nor any albums that are marked to Store Locally.
Albums marked to Store Locally are protected when clearing the cache, so these photos remain available for offline editing. If you still need to clear more space, you can clear these protected caches too. On iOS, go to the Library view, select the album’s … menu icon. Tap Disable Store Locally and then Clear Cache from the same menu. On Android, go to hamburger menu > Device Info & Storage > Manage Storage and select the albums that you want to clear, then tap the Clear button to purge the offline content.
More information
For extensive information on Lightroom Desktop (cloud ecosystem, including mobile), see Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro which already updated for the latest features, and can be downloaded immediately after purchasing. If you already have a current Lightroom Cloud Premium Membership, the latest eBooks are available for download in your Members Area.
Note: purchase of this book includes the first year’s cloud-based Premium Membership, giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
Hi there,
Lightroom is using almost 26GB on my Galaxy S10e. I’ve checked all the settings (smart previews, cache, offline Albums …) you have described. There are still almost 23GB data in use. Do you have any further hints?
Do you have a subscription so that everything’s safely backed up in the cloud? And how many photos are in your library?
This was very helpful. Just freed up 7gb on my 64gb iPhone, I wasn’t aware of the clear cache option. Thank you.
I have having the same issue, but it’s about 10G. I’ve tried everything above. I do have everything safely backed up on the cloud, and I’ve got about 1800 photos. Any suggestions?
When you say “the same issue”, what’s the problem you’re having specifically?
Lightroom was using nearly 22 GB of space on my phone and wouldn’t let me delete pictures or clear the cache. So I updated the app and it’s now taking up nearly 27 GB. I deleted almost 10k pictures from Lightroom completely and it still shows it using nearly 27 GB of space and still won’t let me clear the cache. Any tips?
Are you syncing to the cloud or not? Where are you seeing that size report? And iOS or Android?
So basically, all photos that imported into lightroom mobile will be uploaded to Adobe Cloud storage and not using local storage?
Essentially yes. The cache size is limited once they’re uploaded.
Yes, same issue, despite clicked on the Clear cache, restarting the iPhone and so on Light room is still using the same amount of space but no clear option are shown again