Collections very slow

I've had the same issue for years now – whether it's creating, renaming, moving, or deleting collections. I always assumed the lag was due to the roughly ~250 smart collections in my catalog, but despite deleting all of them recently, there has been no noticeable improvement in performance. 

Creating each new collection takes ~30 seconds on my state-of-the-art system (see below). Granted, that's a significant improvement over the ~60-seconds it took on my old machine (2017 MacBook Pro 15"), but still way slower than it needs to be to be practical – especially considering how quick and responsive most other LR functions are with a catalog as large as mine (i.e. searches, keywording, etc.)

For now, the only workaround seems to be editing/organizing each incoming project using a smaller, temporary catalog and then importing it into my primary catalog. Workable, yes, but tedious, especially when one wants to make additions/changes to the collections tree (which I rely on heavily.)

Any improvements or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

CATALOG

~500K images / ~4,500 collections / 0 smart collections (My catalog is admittedly huge, but I prefer to keep everything in a single database since my commercial, stock, and personal work often intersects)

LR

LR Classic (11.3.1)

SYSTEM / MACHINE

macOS Monterey 12.3.1 / MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021), Apple M1 Max, 64 GB

Hi there,

We're sorry to hear about the lag that you see in the collection in Photoshop. We're here to help.

Which version of Lightroom are you using? How many pictures does the collection have? How are you trying to add the new collection set? Please try with a new catalog to see if it is the same issue for all the catalogs or just this one? 

Try optimizing Lightroom:https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

and let s know if this works.

Thanks

Ranjisha