The newest Mac operating system, macOS 10.14 Mojave, went live yesterday. The big question is, does Lightroom work?
Lightroom
The good news is Lightroom Classic 7.5, Lightroom CC 1.5 and Lightroom 6.14 (and as-yet-unreleased later versions) do work on Mojave, with no known issues at this time.
Older Lightroom versions are not supported, and will not be updated. They haven’t been extensively tested on the new Mojave operating system, but many people reported that they crashed regularly on High Sierra, so that is likely to continue.
New issues being reported:
- Lightroom crashes when switching between Mojave’s Light & Dark modes (so just don’t do it while Lightroom’s open)
- Lightroom Classic 8.0 and CC 2.0 are resulting in some performance issue reports that appear to be limited to Mac Pros.
Other Adobe Applications
There are some known issues with the current shipping version of Photoshop CC 2018, however there are also workarounds.
Here’s Adobe’s official announcement on Mojave compatibility.
Wacom Tablets
The latest driver is reported to work, but you have to tweak a security setting. The instructions are on Wacom’s site.
As always, it’s still sensible to wait for real-world feedback before upgrading mission-critical computers. It’s likely that additional issues will be discovered when a larger number of people are using Mojave. If any significant Lightroom issues are reported, I will update this post.
I am running Lightroom 4.4 on a Macbook Pro 2015 with Mojave with no problems. That version won’t do maps any longer but that has nothing to do with Mojave.
However, I am frightened to upgrade to Catalina, because I can not lose my Lightroom catalog. I spent way too much time building it. I can’t pay Adobe monthly. I would like to find the latest stand alone disk. Is that 6.0? Would it easily link to my present catalog?
There is no current stand-alone version of Lightroom available, it’s subscription only.
Google changed their API, so the Map module no longer connected.
Thank you for all your hard work in helping us to figure out all the ins and outs of upgrading.
I have a question,. Is lightroom 9 compatible with Mohave?
Hi Sally
Yes, it is (running it on Mojave myself)
I upgraded my iMac to Mojave. I have also installed Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC. None of my old LR catalogs (on External Hard drives) are accessible in the new Lightroom CC platform. Is there an incompatibility issue? If so, what can be done? This is an epic fail.
Hi Don
I assume by Lightroom you mean Lightroom Classic CC? Not Lightroom CC which is the cloud version? If you subscribe to the Photography Plan and have been using Classic, have you downloaded CC by mistake? If so, just download Classic.
With Lightroom Classic (current version 8.2) catalogs previously used run fine (we’ve been using the combination on Mojave for some time)
Let us know if that’s not the issue so we can help more though!
Paul
Where are they stored Don? And are you getting an error message? I’ve seen a few reports of people storing their catalogs on an NTFS formatted drive and using an extra app to allow macOS to write to that drive format, which then stopped working when they upgraded to Mojave.
I have installed Mojave 10.14.3 and I upgraded lightroom to 8.2 release a couple of days ago. Now the fan on my Macbook Pro gets very loud and the laptop gets hot. This is a new problem. I unchecked the graphics processor in the general tab under preferences in lightroom and seemed to help a bit. The processor on my MAC is 3.1 GHz intel core i7. Memory is 16GB 1867 MHz DDR3 Graphics is Intel Irs Graphics 6100 1536 MB.
Also when I add a new folder under my main picture folder – lightroom doesn’t see it so I can import the pictures. I often have to reboot my machine and then it will see the folder. Doesn’t make sense to me.
Thanks for any help you can give me.
katie
Check Activity Monitor app to see what Lightroom’s doing at the time. And click on the ID plate to see whether LR’s busy doing something. I suspect it’s syncing or something like that.
I just had a new SSD installed and Mojave 10.14.2 wont open anything LR, any news or thoughts on this?, thanks
Depends on which version of Lightroom you’re using. What happens when you try? And which LR version is installed?
I just installed Mojave and can still open LR 6 — but– it has alas “lost” or “forgotten” all my old settings, catalogues, etc. It is like a “virgin” version of LR6. Any idea how to fix this?
Find your catalog on the hard drive – it’ll have a .lrcat extension – and double click on it to open in Lightroom again.
I have an odd problem and don’t seem to be able to resolve it? On holiday, I put all pictures from memory card onto 2 external hard drives so I start each day fresh. I also keyword and structure each location into a separate file. However, on return home this time … although the pictures have transferred across to the larger hard drives on my iMac … the keywording hasn’t moved with them. Any ideas or help would be appreciated? Thanks for the great site and resources.
The information is stored in the catalog, so you’d need to copy the laptop’s catalog over to the iMac and use Import from Another Catalog to transfer it into your iMac’s catalog. There’s step by step instructions on page 413-415 of my LR Classic book.
I installed Mojave and can’t open LR 6 anymore; Driving me nuts as I have SO much editing to do and took my day away from my kids to catch up 🙁
Have you updated to 6.14?
Something broke the colour management in the latest Lr release when running in Mojave. Basically prints were not printing with accurate colour. Following some Googling, the advice at Luminous Landscapes to delete the printers, delete the drivers, restart and then re-add the printers (Mac OS then reports the missing software and re-installs the drivers worked for me.
I bought a new MacBook Pro and installed Mojave, now I can’t open any of my LR catalogs for longer than a day. LR says there’s an issue with the catalog and cannot launch. Short of creating a new catalog everyday – Groundhog Day – Im going to try and roll back to High Sierra. Talk about frustrating 🙁
Hi Tracey
That’s more than annoying! Can you tell us the exact message though? In case it isn’t actually Mojave?
That does sound frustrating. But it sounds a lot like a hardware problem that’s causing catalog corruption rather than a Lightroom one. Where’s the catalog stored? Internal drive? External drive?
Hi
after I installed Mojave on my MacPro I can`t manage to install LR tether plug in 1.3.0. It just doesn’t show up in LR plug in manager. Do you know if the LR Tether Plug in is compatible with Mojave?
Thank you
Roberto
Do you mean the Fuji tether plug-in? If so, no, Mojave isn’t supported on it (currently)
Pentax 645z. Sorry I didn’t specify it before.
Ah! Currently Mojave isn’t listed as supported for this Plugin
It would be worth dropping Ricoh a line to see if they can get it updated, as it’s not one that ships with Lightroom. Lightroom plug-ins aren’t generally affected by operating system updates, but tether plugins must use OS components to talk to the camera. It looks like Fuji have just had to update theirs for the same reason.
It just struck me, that maybe by brain is fooling me: On the iPad a two-finger swipe works on the faders. I might just be longing so much for that feature on my Mac. No reason it should not exist.
Great, put in a feature request! Here’s instructions on how: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
Or maybe it was a two-finger drag? I am sure I could use the faders just by hovering over it and using an N-finger drag. (But if BetterTouchTool can accomplish what I am now missing, I will check that out.)
Hi Victoria,
I have just installed Mojave on my MacBook Pro, and sadly I cannot get my sliders to work as usual: Normally I use the sliders by hover/drag with three fingers (which is sooo convenient for me).
I have tried turning various trackpad functions on and off, but nothing has helped so far.
Any ideas?
Hmmm, a three finger gesture isn’t a standard Lightroom gesture. Perhaps you were using something like BetterTouchTool and it needs updating?
I’m having issues with LR not displaying the side bars (no I don’t have them hidden) and also I can’t get the top bar to show the red/orange/green dots, it will flash up for a second and then just the main mac menu bar is accessible…I can’t get out of Full Screen that way.
Sometimes the side and bottom bars display properly but just reopened LR and now they don’t. If I switch to Import they show but switching between Develop and Library I get just black on the side and bottom bars. Anyone else reporting this?
I’m seeing a couple of odd reports around full screen mode like this one https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-7-5-macos-10-14-title-bar-disappears-on-entering-full-screen-sometimes , but nothing I’ve been able to reproduce so far.
If you can still reproduce it, here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
You might try resetting preferences too https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/
I am having issues with the Import module. The module pops up when I use CMD Shift & I but the sidebars in whatever module I am in is over the top of the Import module (hiding the Import button). I can kind of work around it by clicking on the import module and pressing enter but it doesn’t allow me to add Custom Text.
Have you tried the standard troubleshooting steps? https://www.lightroomqueen.com/standard-lightroom-troubleshooting-steps/
I’m seeing this as well. It happens intermittently whichever way I open Import. All I can do is Esc to quit the module then start the import dialog again. I’ve not seen any pattern to it happening. It’s clearly a bug somewhere between Lightroom and Mojave.
(still love this app!)
Ah, yes, I’ve seen a report on this. It’s a conflict with Mojave full screen mode. If you come out of Mojave’s full screen (and perhaps use LR’s version instead) then it’ll work as expected.
After problems with my computer I reinstalled the Mac OS but now it’s updated to Mojave and it won’t let me reinstall LR6, just reports there is a ‘problem’. Photoshop 6 install fine.
Any thoughts on why LR6 won’t install?
thanks
(As I only use these as a hobbyist and intermittently I’m not upgrading).
What kind of problem does it say there is? Does it give further information?
It has become painfully slow in Mojave when I press “F” to view previews in Full screen. Takes about two secs to switch between pics, even i f previews already exist. It goes instantly in Loupe mode. Do you experience this?
I can reproduce this. Here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
I’m running Mojave and latest Lightroom Classic CC on a 2017 iMac.
I’ve noticed 3 times that switching between Light and Dark mode causes my Lightroom to crash…
Karel.
Thanks Karel, someone else has just reported that too: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-crashes-when-changing-to-dark-mode-in-apple-mojave
Good to know you are always there for us.