Does Lightroom not have an option to sync everything from my desktop?

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@Chicago_j wrote:

Without everything in the cloud how am I supposed to use features such as sensei? I'm trying to understand if this incredibly expensive program simply will let me do what "free" applications like Apple Photos, Google photos and even OneDrive can do which is sync everything to the cloud and make it discoverable.

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This might need some clarification, because the way you described Apple Photos and Google Photos is not how it is documented. Neither service syncs everything to the cloud. Both services require you to choose what to sync. They do sync “everything” if by “everything” you mean everything inside the Apple Photos or Google Photos library, but that is not “everything.” For example, Apple Photos is a specific database inside the Pictures folder. If you have photos scattered throughout your hard drive, Apple Photos and Google Photos do not automatically pick up all of those and sync them. You have to add them. Just like cloud Lightroom.

Cloud Lightroom can also work like Apple Photos and Google Photos in that you can set up your phone so that all photos you take with it automatically go to the cloud. That, also, can feel like “everything,” but it’s really just every photo taken with the phone camera.

As I understand it, with cloud Lightroom, you do get what you expect. Because it does work very much like Apple Photos and Google Photos, in that: Any photos you throw into the service are all uploaded to the cloud, and the cloud becomes the primary storage. But only what you throw in there.

If you have a photo that is not within the Apple Photos or Google Photos library, such as a random folder within Documents (like a work project folder), or on a USB drive, that photo does not automatically upload to the cloud. You are not getting “everything.” To get it up there, you must add it to Apple Photos or Google Photos. Lightroom works exactly the same way.

What can confuse this is that Google and Microsoft integrate their photo services with their backup services, Google Drive and OneDrive. Unlike pure photo sync services, their backup services can back up any file type: Word processing documents, spreadsheet documents, PDFs, anything. But they still don’t back up entire volumes.  Here is a screen shot from the official help page for how to get photos into Google Drive. Step 3: You have to select folders or pictures. It doesn’t automatically do everything. Same as Lightroom.