Participant

Question

Lightroom Classic extremely slow export

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
September 21, 2025
7 replies
1356 views

After M1 MacBook Pro Upgrade to Tahoe, Lightroom Classic is running extremely slow, 3 HOURS to export 42 images.

My workflow has come to a halt

Help

[Moved from ‘Bugs’ to ‘Discussions’ by moderator, according to forum rules. You cannot file a bug report for Lightroom Classic 14.5.1 on MacOS 26, because Lightroom Classic 14.5.1 is not supported on that version of MacOS.]

macOS

mbrch

Participating Frequently

Same here. But with sequoya 15.7.3,
MacbookPro M4 Pro 2024
On my workplace computer.
Takes 35mn for 60 exports. Impossible to work.

Noel Orridge

Community Manager

Hi @mbrch! Thank you for reaching out! Please share the version of Lightroom Classic you’re on. Have you tried exporting with GPU turned “OFF”? If not, Go to Preferences > Performance > Use Graphics Processor, checkmark all options but leave Use GPU for Exports unchecked. Restart LrC and try exporting.

Also see if your LrC has all the required permissions: 🔎 Quick Tips: How to give Full Disk Access to Lightroom Classic on macOS | Community.

Hope this helps!

Noel

mbrch

Participating Frequently

@mbrch Hi, Diabled GPU, no changes.
Here is activity monitor.

I am on a restricted access computer, and indeed have a message about file access

I cannot give access myself. I will investigate with IT , and come back here.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

For any Mac applications that appear to run very slowly in macOS 26 Tahoe, especially those using the Mac GPU (which Lightroom Classic Export can definitely use), there is one more thing to check.

It turns out that there’s a bug in macOS 26 Tahoe related to apps built using the Electron application framework, and the important thing is that this bug slows down other unrelated apps trying to use the GPU. If an Electron-based app is running, quit it and check for an update for it that fixes the problem.

Lightroom Classic is not based on Electron, but because the bug can affect other apps, Lightroom Classic performance could be a victim of this bug if an Electron app running in the background is tying up the hardware.

I’m not saying this is the only cause of an unusual slowdown, but it has been found to be behind many mysterious slowdowns in Tahoe. (Lightroom Classic still works and exports quickly on my M1, but as usual, I’ve been keeping it on macOS 15 until all significant bugs related to the new OS are fixed.)

For more details, read these articles:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/10/10/update-your-slack-discord-clients-the-electron-tahoe-gpu-slowdown-bug-is-fixed

https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/11/macos-26-tahoe-electron-gpu-slowdown-bug-fix-rollout/

B

botts85

Participant

I am also having this issue, and it persists across most Lightroom Classic tasks. Even deleting an image has a latency of several seconds. To edit capture time, the time elapsed from clicking the menu item to having the dialog open is taking 10+ seconds.

Image file type and size do not appear to impact the performance issue positively or negatively.

Environment details:

LR Classic version: 14.5.1 [ 202508231203-c2638d01 ]
Camera RAW version: 17.5 [ 2318 ]
macOS version: 26.0.1 (25A362)
Computer: 14" MacBook Pro - M2 Pro 16GB memory
Master files stored on SMB share connected via 10Gbps ethernet.
Library is stored on internal SSD.

A

Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @richard.1604@gmail.com
Just checking in to see if you're still running into that issue. Let me know when you get a chance!
Thanks so much,
Alek

*(If you mention me with an @, like @Aleke, I’ll get a notification and can respond faster.)*

R

richard.1604@gmail.comAuthor

Participant

Hi
Still got the same issues!
It’s driving me nuts
My workflow is non existent
Richard
Sent from my iPhone

Conrad_C

Community Expert

There is another thread here where someone linked to a Reddit thread with a potential solution for extreme slowdowns for Mac apps in general:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1no872w/psa_macos_26_bug_leads_to_performance_issues_in/

I haven’t personally tried it, but if that fix helps you, then that means the bug is in macOS 26 Tahoe.

The reason I haven’t tried it is I always wait for a while (often months) before installing a new OS. I prefer to wait out all of these issues until Apple and others release their bug fix updates. macOS 15 Sequoia continues to be very stable for me.

O

Olly Bowman

Participating Frequently

I'm also seeing slow performance, editing photos is painfully slow on my M1 Max MacBook Pro to the point of being unusable, and exporting does seem a little slower. There are also several UI issues when using Lightroom in full screen mode.

I get that there is no official support of Lightroom for macOS 26 but this level of performance is really unacceptable after months of a beta release.

i had to stop editing yesterday evening because the poor performance was really frustrating. Several seconds on occasions before a photo would be loaded.

D

dj_paige

Legend

I'm also seeing slow performance, editing photos is painfully slow on my M1 Max MacBook Pro ...

Please start a new thread and explain your problem in detail, and people will try their best to help you. However, you should not continue this topic about editing slowness in this thread, as your problem is clearly different than the original topic about exporting.

O

Olly Bowman

Participating Frequently

I'm not looking for help, i'm adding to the post which is titled 'Lightroom Classic extremely slow" and is in the "discussions" forum. I'm simply adding to the discussion about Lightroom classic being slow.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

After M1 MacBook Pro Upgrade to Tahoe, Lightroom Classic is running extremely slow, 3 HOURS to export 42 images.
By @richard.1604@gmail.com

There should not be any reason why Lightroom Classic alone would take 3 hours to export 42 images, so there might be something else also using the processor and competing with Lightroom Classic for processing time. There is some detective work you can do to try to find out where the real problem is.

When exporting, open the app Activity Monitor (it comes with your Mac, in the Utilities folder) and click the CPU tab. Click the heading for “% CPU” to sort the list by the processes using the most CPU. During an unusually long export, look at which processes are at the top. Is the top process Lightroom Classic, and what is the % CPU used? If the process using the most CPU is Lightroom Classic then maybe there is a problem with that software. But if the process using the most CPU is not Lightroom Classic, you may have identified another process that isn’t yet fully compatible with macOS 26 and is using too much CPU.

The GPU tab may provide similar feedback. Also, check the Memory tab and report what the Memory Pressure is during exporting, and if any processes are using an unusually high amount of memory in the list.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Every year we see the same thing. As soon as Apple upgrades MacOS (or even when Apple releases a public beta), people install it without waiting for software like Lightroom and Photoshop to be certified for that version of the OS. And then they complain about compatibility problems. I'm not saying that your problem is caused by this, but it definitely could be and the answer is that you will have to wait until Adobe brings out an update that is officially supported.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

O

Olly Bowman

Participating Frequently

Yes, but the reason there are beta versions is so that pre-release issues can be found, and developers can get their software working properly. Adobe have had three months to work with the beta, or possibly longer as they are such a major developer.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

You will find that many developers, not just Adobe, choose to not declare compatibility on day one of the .0 release of a major OS upgrade. The reason is that in the past, some developers did declare compatibility based on months of testing with OS pre-release builds, but new bugs crept in between the last GM and the actual .0 release and these developers got burned when customers started calling and saying “you said it was compatible and there is this problem.” After that happened a few times, many developers today will not declare compatibility until they have had time to run their full test suite on the actual .0 release.

This is probably why the official article “Adobe apps compatibility with macOS” doesn’t mention macOS 26 yet, but I don’t work for Adobe so I don’t know the real reason Adobe has no information about macOS 26 yet.

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