Legend

P: Year field in Edit Capture Time doesn't allow slow typing

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
April 5, 2019
4 replies
229 views

Typing into the year field in the Edit Capture Time dialog is too fussy, making it difficult for people who are slow typists (hunt-and-peck or disabled) to enter the year. If you type just a little slowly, then after 1-3 digits, the dialog thinks you've finished entering a year, and the next digit you type will erase the previous ones. Screen recording:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ks09r4f5847zwx0/capture-time-digits.2019.04.05.mov?dl=0

A perhaps related problem was reported fixed back in 2015.4, though it had somewhat different symptoms. Another user just wasted a bunch of time tripping over this:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/11010712#11010712

The fix should be trivial: the timeout for entering digits just needs to be increased a fair bit.

Tested on LR 8.2 / Mac OS 10.14.3.

C.Cella

Legend

I dare to suggest no timeout and commit only when the user charges field OR better wait till when the good number of digits is entered.

YYYY format

If user types less than 4 digits (e.g 198) LrC will NOT do anything until the user has typed the full 4 year digits (e.g 1989)

OR maybe LR could fill the empty digits with 0 upon extended timeout expires

e.g

1.User types 19 in Year Field
2. Timeout OR field change

LrC fills the empty digits in year and does 1900

Would NOT work for Month or Day

I am personally very slow.
No timeout would be better, let me think as much as I can or reply to the sudden phone call without commiting anyhing ;)

johnrellisAuthor

Legend

Lightroom uses a standard Mac library control for entering the date, and the problem exists with that control. For example, go to Mac’s System Settings > General > Date & Time and set the time manually -- the same behavior occurs there. See the attached screen recording.

It’s more than an hour or two for a developer to code their own date control, since you need to handle the different language and regional date formats. I’m guessing that’s why Adobe has never prioritized this acknowledged bug.

Screen Recording 2026-03-11 at 10.59.02 AM.mov

johnrellisAuthor

Legend

This is a very old, Mac-only, trivial bug that Adobe has never prioritized to fix. It occurs when you type the four year digits too slowly for LR’s taste. Type them faster.

Another sloppy bug is that the dialog doesn’t warn you when you type in an invalid year (e.g. “1492”).

johnrellisAuthor

Legend

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr_Photography, please merge with this existing bug report and unlock it:

johnrellisAuthor

Legend

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr_Photography, also, please merge this locked thread:

into this bug report:

Cletus

Known Participant

While the Year field shows 4 digits you are only allowed to enter 2 digits. Trying to enter any year value in the 20Th century drop the first two characters. If I edit the Capture date field in Lightroom Desktop, the correct date is added and this correctly syncs back to Lightroom Classic.

Windows users report 4 digit years and no bug.

Apparently the Catalog stores the 4 digit date. If the capture date is scaned into the original file, it preserves the correct century.
However if you attempt to edit the capture date in Lightroom only the year digits are passed and no century digits.