Local Storage setting to use more of the available free space on phone ?

[mikebore]

Lightroom Version Number

3.4.0 F59BE2

Operating System

1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
2. iOS

I have an iPhone X with 256GB storage. LRCC is currently using 8.39GB and the phone has 172 GB free.

There are 73,000 photos in my LRCC Library and ideally I would like smart previews of all of these so that I see a screen size image of any photos without it having to be downloaded.

So far I have had the Local Storage setting on "Only Download Smart previews", since this seemed to fit my intent. I don't want full size photos of just some, but smart previews of all.

But when I scroll back through All Photos on the phone it is clearly downloading as I scroll, and if I select one it shows a progress circle briefly.

How can I get LRCC to use some of the 172 GB of free space to store more photos in the phone?

What would be the effect of turning off "Only download Smart Previews" ?

Thanks

 

[Johan Elzenga]

You can download the smart previews to your phone. Tap on the three dots behind an album name and choose 'Store Locally'.

 

[mikebore]

You can download the smart previews to your phone. Tap on the three dots behind an album name and choose 'Store Locally'.

Thanks for quick reply!

I had assumed that setting downloaded the full size files not smart previews from the storage requirements it reports.

I just set "Store Locally" for an album of 58 photos and it says it will use 690 MB.

That sounds like more than Smart Previews?

 

[Jim Wilde]

12mb per file sounds more than Smart Previews, I'd expect 1-2mb per smart preview. Are you sure you have the global "Only Download Smart Previews" enabled?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Or did it actually say 69.0MB, which would be a more expected amount?

 

[mikebore]

That was the problem. I have had "Smart Previews only" set to ON the whole time until just now when experimenting, I had left it OFF

So that works to force download smart previews on an album by album basis, but I have 500 albums....any way to do it in bulk!?

Thanks.

 

[Jim Wilde]

So that works to force download smart previews on an album by album basis, but I have 500 albums....any way to do it in bulk!?

Not that I'm aware of, sorry.

 

[mikebore]

Thanks Johann and Jim for the help

 

[Jim Wilde]

Thinking about this a bit more, you could create another album in which you put ALL images, then set that to store locally. Once downloaded, you could then store locally on the other albums (if you want to) and that'll be an instant thing as there'll be nothing to download. Once you've got all albums showing the blue "downloaded" icon you could remove that temporary album (or just leave it).

 

[mikebore]

Thanks for that clever suggestion. I think I will try it with a single year first and see if there any unforeseen consequences. I have just finished checking the three dots option on several albums which are downloading now so have to wait to try it.

 

[mikebore]

I have created a test album of 20000 and clicked the "Store locally" and it is now "waiting". I think leaving the "temporary" all photos album is a better option than deleting it once the download is complete, as it avoids having to click 500 triple dots to select "store locally"

 

[mikebore]

The 20000 downloaded OK and LRCC usage is reported by the phone to be 66 GB....very much what I wanted and as expected, and up from the 8Gb I mentioned in the OP.

Because of the success of this I decided to go the whole hog and create one album of All Photos (70000), as you suggested, to supersede the trial. I have created this but when I turn on store locally it says I need to free up 30GB. This is because the extra 58 GB of the trial is still being used so it thinks there is not enough space. I have turned off "store locally" everywhere, and deleted the trial album but the Phone still reports LRCC is using 66 GB. I expect at some point it will catch up and there should be enough space.

On my wife's 256GB iPad, where no trials were done and which has similar space usage to my iPhone, I turned on "store locally" for the 70000 Apple Photos album and it reported 122 GB would be needed, which was less than the free space available so it is now downloading all the smart previews happily.

The situation in my OP was that I had 172 GB free so it ought to be able to accommodate the 122 GB needed for all 70000 Smart previews.

Any suggestions for getting my phone to let go of the trial space so it can download the 122GB? I have tried signing out and back in, and rebooting. May have to uninstall and reinstall and start all over.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Have you tried using the global "Clear Cache" command....that should only delete the cache space that was used by that initial 20k album, provided you have deleted that album. Still might take a little while to do the clear-out though.

Edit: as you've apparently unchecked "store locally" on all the other albums, it'll probably clear the cache for them also.

 

[mikebore]

Good suggestion...thanks. I have done that and now have:

Locally Stored Copies 13.65GB
Cached Files: 0.00 GB
Free Space: 84.77GB

But, when I now try and turn on "Store locally" in the All Photos album I am told I need 122.9 GB...."free up 38.6GB !".....which is consistent with LRCC thinking there is only 84.77 free.

So the problem is that LRCC thinks there is only 84.77 GB free, but Settings>iPhone Storage> says only 84.7 GB of 256GB used ie 171 GB free. The iPhone says LRCC is only using 14.99GB after clearing the cache.

This is not happening on my wife's iPad where LRCC shows 140GB free, in line with the Settings/iPhone Storage values.

I think there may be some history on my iPhone here due to having "stored originals" in Photos for while, then changed it to "keep optimised". I think there are probably a lot of full size files in Photos which are treated as free space by the phone now I have changed it to "optimised", but which are not seen as free space by LRCC. Next move may be to sign out of iCloud Photos to try and clear those out.

I have tried rebooting the phone.

 

[mikebore]

I have signed out of iCloud Photos Library and cleared out all Photos photos, including recently deleted, so now there is nothing in Photos or Camera Roll.

LRCC now sees 160GB free and is downloading the smart previews for the All Photos album.

So all good except for two niggles:

1. Sync status (little cloud icon) shows it is busy "Storing Album Locally", which is good, but it also shows it is Auto-importing from Camera Roll with 237,961 pending. Where are these coming from when Camera Roll is empty? When I first set up LRCC I was worried that "auto import from camera Roll" would cause a lot of duplicates but it seemed very good at not importing duplicates, but I am puzzled about the huge number.

2. The "All Files" album I have created to be able to download the smart previews in one go, is not a smart album. So all future images will need to be added manually to it to keep up to date. Not a huge issue, but a niggle.

 

[Jim Wilde]

1. After getting the space sorted out, and the download going, did you sign back into iCloud Photos? It may be that's where that huge number of images is coming from, i.e. if iCloud is syncing back to the phone, they'll be picked up as new files by LRCC and will be auto-added if you have that function enabled. I specifically have iCloud on my iPhone disabled for photos because of this (it makes no sense to me to try to use two clouds to sync the same photos, some confusion is inevitable).

2. Yep, no way round that for now, except that if you enable "Store Locally" for the auto-import album the SPs will still be downloaded even if they're not in the All Files album.

 

[mikebore]

1. No I have not signed back into iCloud Photos.....it is still empty. I wanted to let LRCC take the space it wants for smart previews before turning iCloud Photos back on, and it will use the space left appropriately with the optimise setting.

2. I don't see an auto-import album ? Apart from the ones I have created the only albums are "All Photos", "Lr Camera Photos" and "Recently Added". None of these three have the three dots with store locally option.

 

[Jim Wilde]

There's a global setting for auto-import photos (and also videos), but you can also specify ONE specific album to receive all those auto-imported photos. That is enabled in the tri-dot menu for the album. So if you enable one album to receive those auto-imports, AND also enable it to "store locally", you should be in good shape.

 

[mikebore]

There's a global setting for auto-import photos (and also videos), but you can also specify ONE specific album to receive all those auto-imported photos. That is enabled in the tri-dot menu for the album. So if you enable one album to receive those auto-imports, AND also enable it to "store locally", you should be in good shape.

Thanks again Jim. After asking you about this yesterday I discovered what you said above by accident, when I noticed that the "All Photos" album I am using to download the Smart previews, has an option to "auto add from camera roll" which no other album has. So as you say, that should download smart previews on new photos. I have tested this by taking one photo with the Apple camera, which was successfully imported.

The process of downloading smart previews is continuing on my phone and wife's iPad. 9,500 done on my phone.

The process of "auto importing from Camera Roll" is also proceeding, now 204,000 pending, down from 237,961 at the beginning. The total number of All Photos has not changed as it is doing this, so it is checking but not finding anything to import. This is what happened when I first set up LRCC a few months ago. At that time I had iCloud Photos on, with 70,000 pics in its library. LRCC auto-imported them all but only added a few extra photos, so it was doing a good job of avoiding duplicates. I have not signed back in to iCloud Photos Lib yet, and Camera Roll is empty (except the one test pic above), so it is still a mystery where these 237,961 are.

I do intend to sign back into iCloud Photos when LRCC has finished. Until I started this exercise of forcing smart previews, they played happily together. I am treating LRCC as the master, doing culling and editing in it. Apple Photos is for transient use, memo and note type photos. These photos appear in LRCC of course but I delete from LRCC as I don't want our main photo collection cluttered with memo and note photos.

 

[mikebore]

Just to note that the process of downloading the Smart Previews of my 70000 All Photos album has massively speeded up after updating yesterday to the new Version 4.

 

[mikebore]

This hasn't worked out as expected. Last night the "Store Locally" process had completed (a couple of days previous), and auto-importing from Camera Roll had progressed from the not-understood starting value of c238,000 to c63,000 to do. Total number of All Photos is still c73,000 as only a tiny handful of photos are being added during the auto importing.

When I turned on Store Local Copies for the All Photos album, LRCC told me it would require 110GB and that I had about 160 GB free, so would have about 50GB free when complete. Last night the iPhone was within 1GB of being completely full. In the Local Storage screen:

Locally Stored Copies was 159.8GB
Cached Files was 0.01GB
Free Space was 1.54GB

I wonder if it is storing some photos twice perhaps due to this auto-importing?

My wife's 256 GB iPad is 77% of the way through downloading local smart previews for the All Photos album, and is on course for a total "Local Stored copies" value of 112GB. Her iPad does not auto import from Camera Roll.

On my phone I have turned off Store Local Copies for the All Photos album. which moved them into cache, and now I am deleting the cache. I may try again when the auto importing thing is complete, or accept that I have to be more selective about which albums are stored locally.

 

[mikebore]

Just to complete this saga:

On my wife's iPad the whole process has worked exactly as I hoped and expected. All 73,000 have local smart previews, and use very close to what LRCC said they would use, ie 110GB. She has 50 GB free.

On my iPhone, doing the same thing consumed 160GB, leaving 1GB free space. As previous post, I turned off Store Locally for the All Photos album which moved 160GB to cache. I cleared cache which has now completed, and I am back to 160Gb of locally stored copies and 1 GB free space. I guess it hasn't actually deleted the smart previews even though it is no longer set to keep them. Certainly browsing anywhere in 73000 is consistent with this...the photos are there instantly.

Because of this and the unexplained "downloading" of 234,000 photos from Camera Roll, which finally completed (and added about 2000 by the end), I have started again on my iPhone. I signed out, deleted LRCC. Recovered my I60GB. Reinstalled signed in again. Now I have 73000 back on my phone, but I am being selective about which albums store locally. I will follow this policy for the time being.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Thanks for the update Mike!