20 minutes or more to start up?

Hi @RichardDouglas,

Thanks for reaching out. I can understand how frustrating it must be to wait that long for Lightroom to start up. Let’s narrow this down together.

First, please update to the latest Lightroom 9.0, which includes several performance improvements and startup optimizations. Once updated, could you try launching it again and see if the delay continues?

To help us diagnose the issue more precisely, please share the following details:

 1. Where are your photo files stored?
 • On your local Mac drive
 • On an external drive
 • On a network drive
 • Or synced via Creative Cloud

 2. Can you create a short screen recording showing Lightroom’s startup, from when you launch it until it becomes responsive? This helps us show the behavior directly to the product team.

 3. Please try creating a new test catalog:
 • Go to File > New Catalog,
 • Save it locally on your Mac (not on an external or network drive),
 • Then see if Lightroom opens faster with the fresh catalog.

 4. Finally, go to Help > System Info, copy everything, and paste it here. That’ll give us important details about your configuration (macOS version, GPU, memory usage, etc.).

Once we have this information and your recording, we’ll forward it to the Lightroom team for review and next steps.

Best,
Anshul Saini