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Amy_Mason7137
Amy_Mason7137
Participant
Jun 12, 2026 3:37 AM UTC
Answered

fetching initial previews is not working

As soon as I import, “fetching previews” is stuck. No previews show.  I have tried updating, restarting the computer and the application, and going to the catalog settings- face detection was not checked/address lookup not checked / culling not checked.  

 

    JohanElzenga
    JohanElzengaCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    Jun 12, 2026 2:49 PM UTC

    Your previews cache may be corrupted. Open your catalog folder and remove ‘catalogname previews.lrdata’ from that folder. Then start Lightroom Classic again. Initially you won’t see any previews, but then Lightroom will start rebuilding them one by one. Now try if importing images creates previews as expected.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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    14 replies

    Kelsey5FA4
    Participating Frequently
    Oct 16, 2026 2:02 PM UTC

    Update: I’ve confirmed that my issue was related to a known bug involving Lightroom on Tahoe failing to write the Previews file to ExFAT SSDs. This is also the reason that I haven't been able to "export a catalog" directly to my ExFAT SSD recently.
     

    Current workaround (if working on Mac exclusively): Re-format SSD from ExFAT to APFS. **This involves ERASING the SSD first, so make sure you copy all data to another drive before re-formatting.**

    I reformatted my T7 to APFS, and my previews are now visible on initial open. Hopefully this helps someone (​@Amy_Mason7137 , ​@yourtallness , ​@stephenpyle ) . And hopefully Adobe resolves the ExFAT bug soon.

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      Star_lin
      Star_lin
      Participant
      Oct 26, 2026 5:47 PM UTC

      Thank you! Saw your comment after knocking my head against this for a couple of hours and saving the LR catalogue to my internal hard drive (since I don’t have a drive handy that I can reformat) was the fix.

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      megan_8348
      Participant
      Nov 9, 2026 4:52 PM UTC

      Thank you! I’m also having this issue.

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      Kelsey5FA4
      Participating Frequently
      Oct 16, 2026 11:35 AM UTC

      (Not sure yet if the mods will approve my previous response, so apologies if this is repeat information here.)

      ​I’ve been having this same issue for months. I’m working on a 2021 iMac with Tahoe. I’m opening 15+ new catalogs every week, and this bug is happening with every single catalog. I’m not running any virus software, and my previews files are not corrupted.

      But I DID just discover that if I open a new catalog directly from my desktop or from Dropbox, the previews successfully load at the initial open and are visible immediately. If I open a new catalog from my Samsung T7 for the first time though, the previews do not load on the initial open - I need to close Lightroom and re-open to make them visible.

      ​@Amy_Mason7137 , ​@yourtallness , ​@stephenpyle ...are you storing your catalogs on an external hard drive, by chance?? I’ll be digging in to this today to see if my T7 could be tied in to this issue. (My workflow is to transfer zipped catalog folders to my T7, and then un-zip them on the T7. I wonder if something is going wrong with the unzip process, or if the T7 is just not reading things correctly.)

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      JohanElzenga
      Community Expert
      JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      Aug 6, 2026 10:03 AM UTC

      Here’s another possible cause: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-do-i-change-my-monitor-profile-to-check-whether-its-corrupted/

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      -- Johan W. Elzenga
      yourtallness
      Participant
      Jun 28, 2026 6:08 PM UTC

      This happens to me for every new catalog, so I doubt this is a matter of preview cache corruption.

      I have to restart LR for any images to load and I assume the previews are never built.

      Same issue has been reported multiple times on reddit.

      About time Adobe acknowledges it.

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        stephenpyle
        Participant
        Jul 26, 2026 1:50 AM UTC

        Yes, this is happening on all new catalogs… I would have thought this would be fixed by now but it’s absolutely broken as it’s happened several times to me.

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          JohanElzenga
          Community Expert
          JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          Jul 26, 2026 5:17 PM UTC

          Adobe can only fix something if it can reproduce it, and most likely it can’t. If this was a bug that Adobe must fix, then this thread would have hundreds if not thousands of ‘me too’ messages by now. I know this is extremely frustrating, but this is almost certainly caused by something on your system, not some bug in Lightroom. And yes, that ‘something’ could unfortunately corrupt the preview cache of every new catalog too. I wished I could tell you what it could be, but I have no idea. Well, one idea: Could it be some anti-virus software?

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          -- Johan W. Elzenga
          JohanElzenga
          Community Expert
          JohanElzengaCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
          Community Expert
          Jun 12, 2026 2:49 PM UTC

          Your previews cache may be corrupted. Open your catalog folder and remove ‘catalogname previews.lrdata’ from that folder. Then start Lightroom Classic again. Initially you won’t see any previews, but then Lightroom will start rebuilding them one by one. Now try if importing images creates previews as expected.

          Translate
          -- Johan W. Elzenga
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