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Help! Folders panel suddenly empty: Files are there but can't navigate folders or select them

Forum|Forum|4 days ago
May 18, 2026
4 replies
77 views

I booted up Lightroom Classic (for Mac) today, and my Folders panel is empty across all catalogs. The files/folder structure is intact, and I can Reveal the file and show that LR can locate it in Finder. However, I am completely unable to navigate between folders because of this!

LR also said the location of my catalog backups is invalid, but it showed the correct folder ("The previously selected backup folder is not available. Catalog folder will be used for backup. Location: /Users/xxxx/Downloads/test/Backup"). This is weird, because that is not the catalog's location at all, and that folder no longer even exists.

LR Classic for Mac v15.3

Already tried:

Adding the parent folder again: This did nothing, indicating that LR knows that the folder was already added.
- Restarting LR.
Opening other catalogs.
Checking for updates.
Searching LR Forum and Reddit.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Correct answer etchedinpixels

Issue has been solved.

TL;DR:
This error derived from a missing /Users/xxxx/Pictures folder. You need either a folder or a working alias. In my case the alias broke, causing the error. As in this post, you may get an error about Pictures when you import. I did not.

I find this bug particularly frustrating for the following reasons:

Apple gives us teeny system drives
they charge unreasonable prices for additional storage, making it unaffordable for most
System drives are soldered making it impossible to upgrade later or at reasonable cost
No officially-sanctioned way to relocate Pictures and Movies folders to an external drive. As you can see, my unofficial solution broke Lightroom.

Frustrations with Lightroom:

LR was not using the /users/xxx/Pictures folder for preferences
also not referenced in my catalog
There was no error message to the user

etchedinpixelsAuthorCorrect answer

Participant

Issue has been solved.

TL;DR:
This error derived from a missing /Users/xxxx/Pictures folder. You need either a folder or a working alias. In my case the alias broke, causing the error. As in this post, you may get an error about Pictures when you import. I did not.

I find this bug particularly frustrating for the following reasons:

Apple gives us teeny system drives
they charge unreasonable prices for additional storage, making it unaffordable for most
System drives are soldered making it impossible to upgrade later or at reasonable cost
No officially-sanctioned way to relocate Pictures and Movies folders to an external drive. As you can see, my unofficial solution broke Lightroom.

Frustrations with Lightroom:

LR was not using the /users/xxx/Pictures folder for preferences
also not referenced in my catalog
There was no error message to the user

kentdesign

Community Expert

I agree with dj_paige… first reset the preferences as in the instructions.

as for the the “backup Folder , where do you normally back up to? If it is an external disk then make sure that disk is visible in the finder.

etchedinpixelsAuthor

Participant

Sorry, I missed the instructions to restart after deleting com.adobe.LightroomClassicCC7.plist. I did that, but still no effect.

However, I did more digging and found this post where the user got an error about users/Pictures folder not being available. I don’t remember if I got that error, but I tried importing and I can’t (I also can’t access the LR preference panel anymore). So I looked at my User/Pictures folder, which is an alias pointing to an external drive, since my Mac Studio system drive is so small. The alias was broken (lost the link to the referenced folder) and once I repaired it, Lightroom started working normally!

Thank you all for the help. I find this bug really annoying, because it derives from a missing user/Pictures folder, which LR doesn’t even need. As you can see in the screenshot, Pictures isn’t referenced by my catalog either. This is a really dumb issue that I plan to submit with a bug report.

etchedinpixelsAuthor

Participant

I tried deleting the lrdata file and it had no effect.
Tried adding other folders that were not already in the catalog, hoping it might trigger LR to fix itself, but it didn’t work either.
tried downgrading to LRC 15.2.1. Did not work.
tried deleting preferences file. Did not work.

dj_paige

Legend

I tried deleting the lrdata file and it had no effect.

Does this mean you deleted the helper.lrdata file, or you deleted something else?

dj_paige

Legend

Please clarify this part:

my Folders panel is empty across all catalogs. The files/folder structure is intact, and I can Reveal the file and show that LR can locate it in Finder. However, I am completely unable to navigate between folders because of this!

If it is empty, how do you see the folder structure? Please provide us with a screen capture (use the “Insert Image” icon to include your screen capture in your reply — do not use the paper clip icon).

etchedinpixelsAuthor

Participant

Thanks dj_paige for your reply. Sorry, this slipped my mind! This is what I’m seeing:

Showing how I started getting the message that the path was wrong, despite nothing changing. Note that this has since been resolved, but it was still weird that it started on the same day.

dj_paige

Legend

That is odd, I have never seen that before. I can think of two possible solutions:

Reset the Lightroom Classic preferences. (instructions)
Delete the helper.lrdata file in the same folder that the catalog is located in

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