P: loses connection with files after folder is renamed

I agree, creating a new folder with corrected name and move images into it seems to be the best/only workaround beyond quitting and restarting.  BTW, I'm still having issues with  missing files, even with my new workflow, but it's less frequent.

*Logan31639 - that new folder is a really neat workaround and removes the need to quit. It seems to work well

As far as I can tell. That's a separate issue. This thread is really focused on nailing down the "rename after import" bug that is impacting so many Mac users.

@Greg_White_Shark 

Not that you should have to change your workflow, but it's good that you've found a process that works for you and minimizes the hassle of dealing with this bug. I haven't noticed Lightroom becoming slow after importing images, but maybe I'm not paying close enough attention. In any case, even if I wait to rename an imported folder until the end of a post-processing session, Lightroom still looses its connection to the folder and its contents. For now, as I've previously mentioned, my workaround is to rename folders just before I'm about to end a session and quit Lightroom. That said, I've discovered another data point, which is probably irrelevant to the renaming bug, but it's interesting to me: if I import a bunch of photos into a new folder, select a group of them, and then create a new folder with a descriptive name, checking the option to "Include selected photos" in the dialog box, Lightroom moves the photos into the new folder and doesn’t lose track of them.

For years we've been asking for more progress bars. Thanks for noting that you too are affected by this lack of info regarding background processes. Up voted. 

I've noticed that after imports are complete, or after exports are completed, lightroom is still busy doing something in the background for several minutes, perhaps building previews or whatever, but there is no obvious indication of what it's doing.  All I know is that it gets slow/laggy for several minutes after importing images.   Renaming folders when this is happening tends to give me the lost files issue.   So I've had to change the way I do things:  I now import with import dialog selected, and choose minimal previews.   When I export images, I don't add them to the library until later, when it's a good time to bring them in and can wait for lightroom to finish whatever it's doing in the background.  I do this via syncronizing the folder I know they are in, and again, I use the import dialog and have minimal previews selected.   I've found that this speeds up lightroom considerably and now files tend not to get lost when I rename the folders.     I have also tinkered with Lightroom and Catalog preferences significantly lately, and also reformatted one of my hard drives that was having permission issues, so perhaps all of this together has helped fix the issue...fingers crossed.

Nonsense. The program works just fine with all of those drive types and configurations. Those aren't red flags at all.

This is a newer and very specific macOS bug.

Disconnect all of your external drives, remove all of your third-party LR plug-ins, and see if the problem persists. When I see external drives in a RAID, SoftRAID, etc- that's a big red flag.

Thanks, I will let the team know. 

This thread is being merged into an existing authoritative thread for better tracking and response. Please review the official answer (if any) in the second post on the thread for more information.