Lightroom 6 not working with Mac Sonoma

Support for Lightroom 6 was supposed to last until 31/12/23.

By @jetone

If you mean the date in this document…

End of Support | Lightroom 6 Downloads and Syncing

…the date is under the section “Download Availability for Lightroom 6.14”

So the date was not about general support (as in updates and fixes), but only for how long someone could still rely on the final update to Lightroom 6 (from 2017) being available as a download. Anyone still dependent on that software should make sure they know where their installer is, and if they don’t know, download it from Adobe before that date and keep it in a safe archive in case re-installation is ever needed on a compatible system.

I am unable to open Lightroom. 6 in Mac Sonoma and cannot access my photos!  When will a fix be available?

By @jetone

My previous paragraph ended with the words “on a compatible system.” That is because Lightroom 6 and its installer were finished before Apple started making major changes to macOS. Apple made changes for two reasons: To prepare for the Mac transition from Intel to Apple Silicon, and to better defend against malware. But after Apple started requiring compatibility with the changes, many Mac apps needed to be updated. Many Mac apps, including Lightroom 6, stopped working in macOS 10.15 Catalina, released in 2019.

Adobe made the necessary changes at that time several years ago, so some of the more recent versions of Lightroom Classic do run on macOS 14 Sonoma. Although the only version fully supported on macOS Sonoma is the current one, Lightroom Classic 13. This is because Lightroom Classic 13 is the only version that came out after Sonoma, so Adobe had time to test on Sonoma and make the necessary adjustments.

So, the answer to your question is that the fixes you want have already been available for many years, but are available only in versions after Lightroom 6. So if you want to successfully run Lightroom in Sonoma, you have no choice but to upgrade to the latest version. When you do, it’s very important to understand that the version you want is Lightroom Classic (the successor to the original Lightroom that you are using), not what Adobe now calls Lightroom (a cloud-based version that works much differently).

Although it is a major pain that you can fix this only with a paid upgrade, note that this was not just an Adobe thing. Major software by many other Mac companies also require a paid upgrade to jump ahead this far, given all the rework that all Mac developers have had to do to adjust to how macOS works today.

In fact, if you had been using Apple Aperture (probably the main competitor to Lightroom, 10 years ago), you would have no fixes at all today, because Apple killed Aperture rather than bring it forward. At least Adobe did the work to keep up its photo management software.

Support for Lightroom 6 was supposed to last until 31/12/23.

 

By @jetone

Nope. Lightroom 6 support has been discontinued for a long time. You can download a copy of the installer till 31/12/23, but that is not the same as getting support and getting fixes.

Lightroom Classic 6 is not compatible with Sonoma and I strongly doubt there will be any fixes.

https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/macos-sonoma-compatibility-common-issues.html