Lightroom 9.6 – Panel Tracks set to Manual behaves as if solo mode is enabled

Lightroom 9.6 – Panel Tracks set to Manual but Edit panels still behave as Solo Mode

Bug description

I'm using Lightroom Desktop 9.6 on Windows 11.

In:

Edit → Preferences → General → Panel Tracks

I have Manual selected:

“Panel tracks must be manually opened and closed”

However, Lightroom still behaves as if Solo Mode is enabled.

For example:

Open Light

Open Color

Light is immediately closed

Open Effects

Color is immediately closed

This makes it impossible to keep multiple Edit panels open at the same time.

This is especially frustrating on a large 4K display, where there is plenty of space to keep several panels expanded.

Workaround discovered

I inspected the Lightroom preferences file:

%APPDATA%\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Preferences\Lightroom CC Preferences.agprefs

The following setting was present:

Organize_soloMode = true

Changing it manually to:

Organize_soloMode = false

immediately fixes the problem. Multiple Edit panels can then remain open simultaneously and can be closed manually as expected.

The other relevant settings are:

Organize_manualPanelTracks = true

and

Organize_multiplePanelsPerTrack = true

Therefore, it appears that the Panel Tracks → Manual preference does not correctly disable Solo Mode, or otherwise does not control the actual Edit-panel behavior as intended.

Expected behavior

When Panel Tracks → Manual is selected, multiple Edit panels should remain open until the user manually closes them.

Users should not have to manually edit the .agprefs file to disable Solo Mode.

System information

Lightroom: 9.6

Build: 2060923-1659-a32d844

OS: Windows 11