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Percy Bottle
Participant
April 26, 2025
Question

Endless sync with photos imported from phone

  • April 26, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 150 views

Short version: Photos taken on my phone are synced with LR Classic. I then un-sync them to remove them from the cloud. If I then add these photos to a shared folder, LRC attempts to sync them again but the sync never finishes.

 

Work-around: Delete the photos (remove from Lightroom, leaving the actual photos on disk). Then add them back into LRC using the "Synchronise folder..." command. Now when I add the photos to a shared folder, the sync to cloud feature completes successfully.

 

Versions:
Lightroom Classic 14.3

Macbook Pro M1 2021

MacOS 15.4.1

 

Lightroom for Android 10.3.1

Pixel 8a

Android 15

 

Step-by-step details

  1.  Take a photo on phone. I have LR for Android set to automatically add photos to a "Phone Import" folder.
  2.  Open LR for Android and wait for cloud syncing to complete.
  3.  Open LRC on Macbook and wait for cloud syncing to complete. Photo from the phone appears in the "Phone Import" folder. At this point, the full-resolution image is in the Lightroom Cloud.
  4.  Go to "All Synced Photographs" and delete the new photo. Hit OK to confirm that the photo should be removed from all synced collections, etc.
  5. Locate the photo in the folder where it resides and select it. Drag it to to an existing collection that has "Sync with Lightroom" turned on. This should cause a preview-only to be uploaded to the cloud. The cloud icon at the top right of the LRC screen changes to indicate that it is busy. If you go to "Sync Activity" the photo is listed there and will stay there forever along with the busy cloud icon at top right. The synchronisation never completes unless you use the work-around mentioned above.

 

[Moved from ‘Bugs’ to ‘Discussions’ by moderator, according to forum rules.]

1 reply

Sameer K
Community Manager
Sameer KCommunity Manager
Community Manager
May 13, 2025

Hey, @Percy Bottle. Welcome to the Photoshop Community. I'll help you figure this out.

Your workflow is unusual. You'll need to take a few extra steps. 

 

After step 4, log in to Lightroom Web (https://adobe.ly/4j4aFFv) & check if the deleted section still has deleted assets. 

If you empty the Deleted section on Lightroom Web, Lightroom Classic shouldn't appear as stuck when you continue from step 5 (now 6). 

 

Let me know how it goes. 

Thanks!

Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

P
Percy BottleAuthor
Participant
May 14, 2025

Hi @Sameer K , thanks for looking into this. I followed your instructions, but unfortunately, there's no change. I followed all the steps with a new photo from my phone. After getting up to my step 4, I opened LR on web and saw that the photo was only showing up in the Deleted section. I did "Permanently delete all" to empty that section, then went back to Lightroom Classic and dragged the photo to a shared collection. Now the cloud icon is permanently busy and says it's syncing 1 photo.

 

Going back to LR on Web now, it does say there is 1 sync issue. However, that seems to be of another photo and I'm not sure if that was there before.

P
Percy BottleAuthor
Participant
May 14, 2025

Just a quick follow-up, @Sameer K . I removed that other sync issue I mentioned above, which turned out to be just a photo on my phone that LR Mobile hadn't finished uploading. Then I tried the whole thing again with another photo and got the same result. LR Web now shows no sync issues, but LR Classic is still endlessly trying to upload the latest photo. Thanks for your help.

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