Cloud sync has undergone a huge upgrade behind the scenes in Lightroom Classic 13.3. On the surface, very little has changed, but the newer sync engine should (hopefully) be much more reliable. But what actually changed? And if there are issues, how do you troubleshoot now?
What changed?
On its first sync after the 13.3 upgrade, Lightroom has to migrate and check the local sync data. This process can take anywhere from minutes to days, depending on how many photos are synced and your internet connection speed, so don’t do it when you’re on a deadline! Where possible, Adobe recommends allowing sync to complete (excluding any errors) before upgrading to 13.3 and then keeping Lightroom open for at least 3 hours for the initial migration to complete. The sync numbers will increase and decrease repeatedly during this resync, and general performance may be a bit slower while it’s running, so you may want to leave it to run overnight.
How do I see what’s syncing?
Click the cloud icon in the top right corner to see the current sync activity. If you hover over the cloud icon, a tooltip shows the number of photos uploading and downloading, rather than just how many are syncing overall.
If it never shows the Synced status, and you’ve tried restarting Lightroom, then the sync may be stuck. In the past, you’d go to Preferences > Lightroom Sync and look at the Sync Activity section to see which photo might be stuck, but in 13.3 and later, that’s disappeared. (Update… it’s back in 13.5!)
How do I troubleshoot a stuck sync?
If you’ve previously tried to fix a stuck sync, you may have used the hidden Rebuild Sync Data button. This should no longer be used unless an Adobe staff member specifically tells you to. Don’t manually delete the [Catalog Name] Sync.lrdata file either.
If your sync appears to be stuck, these are the new troubleshooting steps to try:
1. Look in the Catalog panel for an All Sync Errors collection.
If it’s there, click on it to look inside, and hover over the images to see if there’s additional information. For example, if the original photos are offline and smart previews don’t currently exist, Lightroom can’t sync these photos. In that case, you’d need to fix the missing photos or mount the offline drive, then they should continue syncing.
2. Go to https://lightroom.adobe.com, log into your account, and find the Sync Issues albums under All Photos. You can also go to Lightroom Classic’s Preferences > Lightroom Sync tab, hold down the Alt key (Windows) / Opt key (Mac), and click the View Sync Status on Web button to go straight there. The information on the thumbnail shows which device you need to open to allow the stuck photos to finish syncing up to the cloud. What if that device is no longer accessible (e.g., an old phone that’s been replaced)? Then click the checkmark and select Delete in the menu above to delete the partially uploaded photo from the cloud.
3. You will also see a Deleted count on the web. As long as you have a copy of the photos that have been deleted locally, select the Deleted folder. Then click the three dots at the top-right of the screen and select Permanently Delete All.
4. (13.5 and later only), go to Preferences > Lightroom Sync tab and check the Sync Activity section. It takes a few seconds to update, so be patient. Right-clicking on a photo in the list also allows you to remove from Sync (but be aware that it’ll be removed from any collections that have sync enabled, too).
5. Once all of these locations are clear of sync errors, you’ve done all you can to troubleshoot. The next step is to contact Adobe Support. First, generate a diagnostic log by going to Preferences > Lightroom Sync tab, holding down the Alt key (Windows) / Opt key (Mac), and clicking the Generate Diagnostic Report button. This will help the engineers identify and fix your sync issues and whatever caused them.
6. (Optional) This step is not officially supported, but it’s safe, and it’s working for some people… probably 1/10 of the logs we’ve seen.
- Unzip the diagnostic log.
- Open the lrsync_log.html file.
- In the Table of Contents links, click Binary Uploader, or scroll down until you find this section.
- If there are files in needsBinaryUpload section with binaryType: proxy, write down the filename(s). If you reuse filenames, note the capture date too.
- Find those photos in your Classic catalog, make a minor Develop edit in Classic for each of these files, and wait for them to (hopefully) sync.
7. If all else fails, go to https://helpx.adobe.com/support.html and select Start now under Contact Us near the bottom (it will open a Virtual Assistant window, from there you can get to an actual Support Operative), or try the phone support (phone charges may apply). @AdobeCare on Twitter is very responsive once you get past the bot.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit on the Go.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), 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.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Mine was getting stuck with metadata conflicts. Updating metadata solved mystery issue.
Thanks for sharing Ian. Updating metadata as in making a change to something like a star rating?
May I ask why clicking Rebuild sync data and deleting Sync.lrdata is no longer recommended? Is it because these actions do something “bad” or because the above steps are deemed sufficient?
My sync is stuck good and proper at 4,297 photos. There is little I can imagine that can get worse with those options used to be considered nuclear. Just so you know, upon much dithering and with full awareness of the admonition to only perform it when advised by Adobe, I ended up clicking Rebuild sync data. It did literally nothing. Well, not nothing. It restarted LrC, and paused sync. After waiting for a few hours and asking for input here, I resumed sync. After a day or so, I am able to say that Rebuild sync data did nothing. The sync is stuck at the same number.
I am getting ready to delete Sync.lrdata as in the good old days.
I have gone a few rounds with Adobe support either under 13.3 or 13.4. They basically followed the script in this guide and did not fix anything. They told me to wait and see if the sync will clear up. After a few attempts to reconnect with them I gave up, and they marked the case as resolved.
Rebuild sync data doesn’t usually fix anything anymore… as you’ve found. This is due to the changes on the server side of sync. Sync is still largely a black box at the moment, so I can’t say for sure whether it does anything bad, but we’ve been specifically asked by engineering to stop recommending it as a troubleshooting step. There are better options with the new sync engine.
13.3 and 13.4 have a bunch of sync issues that even support couldn’t fix, but they gathered a lot of logs that enabled the engineers to put a whole load of fixes in 13.5. It’s probably best to continue discussing on your forum thread; otherwise, the conversation will get messy.
If LrC 13.5 was supposed to clean up Sync, you can’t prove it by me. With the help of Victoria and Paul I was able to un-stuck a dozen or so files two weeks ago. But after an all-day edit session yesterday, five items are hanging up (one raw file and 4 metadata transfers), even while running overnight. So, I’m writing to suggest a blog/newsletter topic: “Best Sync Practices.” Right now I’m thinking, turn sync off while working. Otherwise, Sync gets constipated. Any thoughts?
There shouldn’t need to be any best sync practices, but it’s likely that there are still a few bugs leftover that are worth Adobe investigating. It would be amazing if they managed to fix everything in one go. Where are they showing as stuck? On the web interface? Or in the Preferences Sync Activity?
Finding filenames in lrsync_log.html and making minor edits has resolved this pain. Thanks!
Since updating to Lightroom classic 13.0, when I apply any AI masks to an edited photo, when synchronising across to Lightroom mobile/web, the image won’t display, instead saying in LrM that “the image is awaiting settings from LrC”.
I have tested this with images that do not have AI masks applied and they display once synchronised perfectly in LrM with my LrC edits.
This is unacceptable Adobe as I use LrM to show my clients my photos. I am having to resort to using a cloud based service to do this ATM.
Adobe this is not an isolated issue and you need to fix this. Why have a functionality in LrC that the mobile and Web platforms cannot display. It defeats the purpose of the synchronised features.
All synchronised photos in LrC 12.0 worked fine across all platforms.
Am running the current and up to date LrC and mobile versions on Windows 10 with a quick machine.
Is it a setting I’m missing in LrC?
AI masks are syncing to the cloud and showing on mobile for everyone else, so it would be worth troubleshooting. I’d start by seeing if they show up on the web interface… if they do, fixing it is probably as simple as deleting and reinstalling the mobile app.
4(Optional) suggestion worked for me. Two of the stuck photos were duplicates with the same file name. I just deleted one.
Thanks
Excellent, we’re pleased it was helpful!
Thank you very much! The suggestion under “4. (Optional)” let me find out which image had been stuck syncing since 13.3 over a month ago.
That’s great! We’re hoping many will vote for the Preferences > Lightroom Sync > Sync Activity section request to bring the display back, it made solving these issues a lot quicker and easier (see at the start of our post before the steps).
Voted for restoring the list of problem pictures, was so much easier with them to fix sync issues.
Hi Victoria. I just had a remote session with Adobe support to fix my “stuck sync issue”. Maybe you want to add the solution workflow to this web page. I have posted it in the Adobe community here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-ecosystem-cloud-based-discussions/sync-doesn-t-stop-although-there-are-no-currently-synced-images/td-p/14635861/page/3
Thanks for sharing. I’ve been away visiting my parents for the last week, so I’m in catch-up mode. I’m glad you’re back up and running.
Before I left, we’d been discussing that possibility on this thread https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/13-3-sync-issues-diy-resolution-from-adobe.50329/#post-1334487.
I need to check in with Adobe before updating the blog post, just in case there might be unintended consequences. As you noted in your post, only those that have the binaryType:proxy are fixed by tickling those photos, and some of the stuck syncs aren’t listed in the HTML log at all, but there doesn’t seem to be any harm in trying it.
Yeah, I cannot see any harm by trying. It might not help in every scenario, but it sure is worth the extra work.
Well, I seem to have solved this issue for my circumstance… at least until Adobe inevitably breaks it again 🙁
I deleted all the sync’d Collections in LrC, then added them all back. I use Smart Collections to filter pics that I then just copy all and drag over to the regular Collections that are able to sync. Why we cannot sync a Smart Collection is beyond me, but a complaint for a separate day.
Anyway, after I added back the Collections and dragged/dropped all the pics I wanted to each one, they all just populated the cloud based system again, appearing in Lr, in my account online, and Lr Mobile.
I have subsequently added, deleted, and edited various photos and all the changes populate across all devices and so rather quickly.
I will mention that I also “reset sync settings” in LrC Preferences, which used to be my first troubleshooting step, before I saw the message not to do so unless instructed by an Adobe employee. A little weird, but ok. So, that happened as well and, of course, I will never know if that was an essential ingredient in yielding the final result of all syncing again.
We’re really pleased you solved your issue. The Sync Engine with v13.3 is a replacement from the one Classic previously used, and it’s looking very stable so far. The bigger issues have been the transition from the old sync engine if there were ny photos with issues at the time.
Hopefully, we’re now sailing in calmer waters!
I would like to add a few comments.
– I had 46 photos that were stuck in sync.
– I contacted Adobe help and in 25 years with many computers and programs, I have never had better support. It look several sessions, and she had to check back with a supervisor, but she got back to me every time by email and then later by calling me.
– We identified the 46 files, conveniently labeled 1-46, in the html file after the download file was unzipped. I looked up each file by filename, made a minor edit (slightly changed the tint), saved it and it soon synced.
– All files have now synced and hopefully this will not recur.
– I understand that this would be difficult with a large number of files and this may not fix every type of sync error, but it seems like a good place to start.
– It would be helpful to be able tp change a group of files at a time, such as changing the tint by +1, as it was clear that all of my stuck files were in only two collections, but I was not able to easily figure that out.
– I hope this helps.
Hi Jon
Great to hear of your positive experience. It sounds like you got a helpful and conscientious Support person at Adobe!
You can change multiple photos at once in Classic, by selecting multiples and making a Quick Develop adjustment (my favorite is to tweak Clarity or Sharpening, then later after the sync drop it back).
For those of you who really want the Sync Activity section back, there is now a feature request for you to go and vote on: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-provide-list-of-images-that-are-being-synced-in-each-direction-in-lrc-itself/idi-p/14649109
Since updating to the latest version my sync activity has said ‘migrating sync data’ and for the past couple of days ‘initializing sync data’ and has not changed since then. I’m struggling to find any solutions online. I swapped over to a new catalog also and done some new work over the weekend, if I had to revert back to my previous catalog and older Lightroom version would I lose all my new XMP data? Thanks.
It would be possible to write the work you’ve done since to XMP and then read that into the old catalog, but it’s not ideal as not everything is written to XMP and you’d need to know which photos you’d changed. It’d be better just to fix your sync issue! Have you gone back to your sync catalog since you created the new one? What’s the status now? And how many photos are synced to the cloud?
Thanks Victoria. I got frustrated with it all last night so just closed it all down. To my surprise it has all synced up today and my files have synced across classic and CC. The only thing that I can’t do now is sync collections via the cloud for some reason, but all my photos have synced across in the ‘all photos’ section.
Oh that’s good news! When you say you can’t sync collections, what happens?
So I stopped syncing my collections in LR Classic in the hope that would solve the issue, so I lost all of the synced ‘Albums’ from the synced ‘Collections’ in LR CC. When I try to sync the Collections now from LR Classic, the Album name then appears in LR CC but does not populate with photos. But the photos in the Collection have then appeared under the ‘All Photos’ tab above, but not the generated Album. Hope that makes sense!
I’m tempted to say that might sort itself out if you wait. Just try creating a new sync collection to see if that turns up and populates?
It took 9 days for my catalog to finish the ‘migrating sync data’, so I would suggest just waiting. Of course, you may have more problems after that, but that’s a different question.
It can be a lengthy process, especially if there are a lot of photos synced. However, once done (and any tidying up if needed) reports are that it seems a lot more solid than the previous sync engine.
Thank you for the write-up!
After the upgrade, my Lightroom went through a massive XMP update and some syncing (though I was not doing any new work). After a day or so, it settled into a status quo where
– Local Activity reads “Syncing 1,170 photos”
– Hovering over the cloud with the blue circle pops up a tool tip saying “Uploading 1,170 photos”
– There is no All Sync Errors collection
– There are 0 photos in “Sync Issues” accessed via “View sync status on the web”
– In Activity Monitor, Lightroom Classic shows little change in Sent Bytes, Threads or Memory used, but shows occasional CPU% spikes.
In other words, LrC sync appears to be stuck. There has been no change in the “Syncing 1,170 photos” number for over two days.
In the past, at least we had the “Sync activity” to frustrate over. Few of the files listed were actionable and some led to cloud dead-ends, but at least LrC showed what it was stuck on.
Any advice? In the past, I would (and have) clicked “Rebuild all sync data”, but now we are told not to do it unless instructed.
Try a restart, because previously sync stopped trying if it failed 4 times, and I’m trying to ascertain whether that’s still the case. It looks like it is.
Have you done much work since the upgrade? Some people are finding that rolling back to 13.2, letting it complete sync and then updating to 13.3 again clears it.
Also, do you have any files in your catalog that are over 200MB? If you’re writing to XMP, that could cause them to get stuck.
Thank you, I have restarted LrC and the computer several times. I did a little bit of work since the upgrade. Downgrade would be the last resort. I would probably go the “Rebuild all sync data” route before the downgrade route. I do not have files over 200 Mb that I am aware of, and the writing to XMP process has finished as far as I can tell.
I wonder what the meaning of the removal of sync activity and the admonition to only use “Rebuild all sync data” when advised by Adobe support really means.
I am guessing sync having always been a mess, Adobe support were inundated with requests mentioning specific sync issues (or rather symptoms) as seen through the inexplicable and unfixable syncing errors as well as the problems caused by using the “Rebuild all sync data”. I used that famous button 5 or 6 times back to back to back, and what I observed that after speeding through a few thousand records, mine would get stuck at “Syncing 123,456 photos” for no reason. Eventually, I just decided to be patient and after a few days the sync resumed and then finished. But I did start and join a few support threads on Adobe forums in the meantime.
Without being able to fix or explain these behaviors, I think Adobe is just trying to discourage users from worrying too much or trying too hard to fix sync issues on our own. It’s more frustrating than ever.
Have you spoken to customer phone support and sent them your diagnostic log? This was a massive overhaul designed to get rid of a lot of the old sync issues, but it still seems to be tripping over a few historical issues which they’re trying to get logs to be able to fix. Once these stuck syncs are fixed, it seems much more stable overall.
I have not. In the past, it was useless. Do you know the shortcut or a magic word? Thank you!
They have updated sync troubleshooting info and should be collecting diagnostic logs to pass back to the engineers. It was hit and miss for the first few days after release but I’m hearing it’s working much better now. You could ask if they’re aware of the updated troubleshooting for 13.3… if they know what you’re talking about, you should be ok. If you have a Twitter account, that route seems to be good once you get past the bot.
I have no All Sync Errors listed in the top left menu.
The cloud icon in the top right is spinning and has been spinning since I upgraded to v13. 3
The message it says is “Initializing Sync Data” and I don’t see an answer referencing that in this thread.
I logged in to Adobe.com but I also don’t see any of my photos there so I’m not even certain if there are two websites?? I have WIN LRC
Initializing Sync Data is the initial migration process, so just leave it running and it should hopefully complete.
I left it running overnight but at some point LRC shut down. So I rebooted my machine this morning (as you suggested to me on facebook) and the little blue wheel is hard at work doing nothing as far as I can tell. My iPhone photos stopped loading to LRC on my laptop on the 22, when, I guess, I did the update.
I did find my photo library on the Adobe site (and my iPhone photos are up to date online in my Adobe account). I didn’t quite understand that my issue had to do with solutions on this page. I’m a bit at a loss as to what next. I didn’t want to call Adobe on a Sunday.
Ahhh that was you Lynn, sorry, I didn’t recognise you. The little blue wheel being the one in the sync popup, right?
What’s your system specification? Shutting itself down overnight might have been the latest macOS installing, or it could have been a Lightroom error.
(am a rookie – I think this is what you want.
OS Name
Version
Other OS Description
OS Manufacturer
System Name
System Manufacturer
System Model
System Type
System SKU
Processor
BIOS Version/Date
SMBIOS Version
Embedded Controller Version
BIOS Mode
BaseBoard Manufacturer
BaseBoard Product
BaseBoard Version
Platform Role
Secure Boot State
PCR7 Configuration
Windows Directory
System Directory
Boot Device
Locale
Hardware Abstraction Layer
User Name
Time Zone
Total Physical Memory
Available Physical Memory
Total Virtual Memory
Available Virtual Memory
Page File Space
Page File
Value
Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
10.0.22631 Build 22631
Not Available
Microsoft Corporation
LYNNS_LAPTOP
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
ProArt Studiobook W7604J3D_W7604J3D
x64-based PC
13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13980HX, 2200 Mhz, 24 Core(s), 32 Logical Pro …
American Megatrends International, LLC. W7604J3D.303, 8/10/2023
3.5
255.255
UEFI
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
W7604J3D
1.0
Mobile
On
Elevation Required to View
C:\Windows
C:\Windows\system32
Device\HarddiskVolume1
United States
Version = “10.0.22621.2506”
Lynns_Laptop\Admin
Central Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 64.0 GB
63.6 GB
31.8 GB
67.6 GB
26.1 GB
4.00 GB
C:\pagefile.sys
My syncing was so slow, I assumed that something was wrong. I was getting 7-10 syncs roughly every 8 minutes. So, I shut off sync in LrC, dump the cloud copy from Lr web and started over. That was roughly at noon my time and it is now 6:30pm. So, in 6 1/2 hours I have synced 2200 photos. Lightning fast compared to what it was doing, but functionally useless as I have 112,000+ photos. This must be Adobe’s latest comment on why we should pick LrC or Lr, but not both. Stupid, who do they have testing this stuff, people with 50 photos? This is totally unacceptable, especially since they took away any debug we had previously.
Oh that is frustrating. I tested with 55k photos synced, 120k in the catalog, and it took about 5 hours in total. I do have super fast internet and everything was pretty clean though. It takes longer than normal because they’re checking every photo carefully against the cloud to clean up possible sync issues.
Hang on, when you dumped the cloud copy, did you do the Delete Lightroom Library from the Account Info, or did you just delete all of the photos?
With this latest LRC update, I have 5 images that won’t stop downloading (this has been going on since the update). I’ve checked for sync errors; there are none. I’ve looked in Lightroom trash for sync-stuck images, which Adobe also suggests; there are none.
In the past, I could have identified the images and done some of my own troubleshooting. Now, I’m forced to rely on iffy support from Adobe. I say “iffy” because my experience with Adobe support (account support as well as technical support) has been universally awful!
Fortunately, whatever is going on with those 5 images seems not getting in the way of other sync activity, so my temptation is to let it be and hope that the next update will either restore user access to the list of syncing images or fix the underlying problem.
exactly same issue (5 images won’t stop downloading). hope a fix !
See our comment at the top of the comments here if you would like assistance.
Removing user access to the list of images being currently synced was a terrible decision. I have used that list hundreds of times to fix a stuck image by removing it from its synced collections and re-adding, or sometimes just by toggling a rating and usually restarting LRC. The regular recurrence was frustrating, and the fix was sometimes time-consuming, but a fix was clear and straightforward and I could do it myself. With luck, an exponential increase in sync support requests will get the support department to insist the feature be returned.
Agreed, especially as, in my experience, dealing with Adobe technical support on Lightroom issues is often more frustrating than it’s worth…at least that has been my experience.
Can’t agree more. I’ve had the exact same experience.
I’m equally hopeful that something similar will return. I get the impression they want to see the sync logs so they can fix the bugs causing the stuck photos, so while it’s frustrating, there’s hopefully a long-term gain.
I looked into the “diagnostic report” a little. It takes a while to generate, even on a very fast computer. It contains a ton of information. Much of it is in a convenient format indexed by a big HTML file with links. But the meaning of almost all of it is opaque. I thought I found reference to where two images were getting errors, but it was (I eventually discovered) a different image that had gotten stuck. In some sense this is expanded access to information, but until it can be used to solve commonly-encountered problems, it’s not a benefit. And all this could have been added without removing the display of synced files that we now miss, which was frustratingly slow to render, but still much faster than saving a report and launching another tool to view it, even in the eventuality that we know just what to look for.
Yes, it’s meant to be read by the engineers rather than us. Some of the information they use to identify stuck photos is within the databases in the log rather than the HTML log file.
I have many synced collections in my Lightroom Classic catalog so I can see/show them on my iPhone. After updating to 13.3, random photos from those collections start losing their location data (Country, State, City, Location). I restored location data from a catalog backup by exporting synced photo as a temporary catalog and importing them back into my main catalog, but Lightroom was removing location data again. I had to remove all synced photos from my main catalog to stop this.
Oh that’s not good. Was it fully synced before you upgraded? That would be worth reporting to Adobe https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
I’ve been going round and round with Adobe “support” for two days now. Every time I get someone, they log in to my computer and just start the process all over again, but they have no idea how to fix it. I have no Sync Issues folder, but there are two photos that are apparently “stuck” and Adobe has no idea how to correct it. They’ve rebuilt my catalog and re-synced everything and still nothing. And because they eliminated the old way of seeing what was happening, I have no idea how to find the two stuck photos so I can delete them and fix the sync problem. Hopefully they’ll restore the old functionality at some point……
Eugh frustrating. Some of the support staff are great but some leave a lot to be desired. This is all new to them too. You might try asking if it can be moved up to a higher support tier.
My experience with Adobe “support” over the years has been so awful that I will do everything I can on my own to troubleshoot an issue before calling them. I have even had tech support make things worse and not solve the problem. (Victoria: Unfortunately, all my experiences with Adobe support have involved the “leave a lot to be desired” staffers.)
I got confused in step 2:
“2. Go to https://lightroom.adobe.com, log into your account, and find the Sync Issues albums under All Photos. You can also go to Preferences > Lightroom Sync tab, hold down the Alt key (Windows) / Opt key (Mac), and click the View Sync Status on Web button to go straight there.”
I couldn’t find Preferences > Lightroom Sync in LR Web or LR Desktop (I don’t use them much), before duh, I realized it must be LR Classic.
Good point, thank you John, I can see how that could be misunderstood. I shall update! – VB
Cloud sync has often been a major headache for me, so this is amazing news! But honestly – it’s about time 😉
Hi Victoria, In your article- Chapter ‘What’s Changed?’ you say this-
“…… (excluding any errors) before upgrading to 13.2 …”.
I am wondering if you meant to say “13.3” in that statement.
Thanks for a very informative article, now my ‘goto’ for answering ‘Sync’ problems.
Thanks, Rob, well-spotted, it was a typo. Corrected now!
Brilliant, thank you for such helpful information, I had been struggling to sync for some time, now fixed!
That’s great news!