Participating Frequently

Question

Lightroom April 2026 Update Breaks Search: Name Searches Returning Incorrect Results

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
April 27, 2026
28 replies
405 views

After the April 2026 update, the search function seems to have (somehow) gotten worse. I know that the update says it addresses search problems but it seems to have broken things.

In all of my photos in Lightroom, I identify people by name and put them into the captions. Prior to this, I could search lightroom and all of this person’s photos would show up. Suddenly I am getting the most BIZARRE results when searching people’s names. The name “Cait” brings back a ton of cat pictures for example - i guess it thinks i am looking for cats?

Not everything needs AI. My entire workflow has been disrupted by this, does anyone know how to fix this?

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

Thank you for continuing to share your experiences here. I’ve been discussing the feedback in this thread with the Lightroom team, and I want to provide a bit of context on where things stand.

Search covers quite a few different workflows, and after reviewing the reports here again, it’s clear that not everyone in this thread is experiencing the same problem. We have examples involving keywords, captions, filenames, multiple search terms, and differences between Lightroom Web, Lightroom Desktop, and Lightroom Classic.

The team is continuing to work on the Lightroom Web search and filtering experience. One change that is already available is a more direct Keyword option in the search/filter interface, so users who want to find photos by an assigned keyword can explicitly perform a keyword-based search rather than relying on the broader contextual/semantic search. Additional search/filter improvements are also being worked on.

However, I don’t want to assume that the new Keyword option resolves every report in this thread. For example, searching a person’s name stored in a Caption, searching an exact filename, and a Keyword filter returning incomplete results are different workflows and need to be evaluated separately.

To help me document each case accurately for the product team, if you’re still experiencing a problem, please share one specific example and, ideally, a short screen recording showing:

Which Lightroom client you’re using: Web, Desktop, Mobile, or Classic

What you’re trying to find

Where that information is stored: Keyword, Caption, filename, or something else

The search/filter you use and the results you receive

Which photo(s) you expected to be returned but weren’t, or examples of results that should not have appeared

If you’re using Keywords, whether Filter > Keyword returns the correct result

If this workflow worked differently previously, please show or describe how you used to find the same photo(s)

Also, please first show us what you are trying to find and where that information appears in the photo or library/catalog. Then perform the same search or filtering workflow you normally use and show us the results you receive. If possible, point out what you expected to see versus what Lightroom actually returned. This will help us understand your exact workflow and give the product team a clear expected-vs-actual example to investigate.

I’m going to separate the different workflows reported here when I take them back to the team, rather than treating everything as a single “search” problem. That should make the individual cases much easier to reproduce and track.

Thanks again for continuing to provide examples. The team is actively iterating on the search experience, and the detailed real-world workflows in this thread are useful in showing where further improvements are needed.

Best,
Anshul Saini

R

randomnothing

Inspiring

I am using keywords to filter and the desktop apps for classic and cloud return the correct result (if and only if I use the filter). Web though - I find it’s way off. I take photos of birds and I meticulously tag them all by location as well as species information. Here is just one example of a mismatch which I will post screenshots of. I filter by my keyword “Beals Point” in the desktop app - I get a correct result of 647. I filter by keyword in the web app, and I get 625.

As an aside - the filter feature on the web is frustrating to use - it seems I have to type the entire keyword and can’t just tab or hit enter to choose it?

Desktop Filter by keyword “beals point” returns 647

Web filter by keyword “beals point” returns 625

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @randomnothing,

Thanks for providing the exact comparison and counts. I’ve shared your “Beals Point” example with the Lightroom team. The team is now looking specifically at inconsistencies where assigned keywords or the resulting photo counts differ between Lightroom Web and Lightroom Desktop.

Could you please also confirm whether 625 or 647 is the expected total by checking the photos assigned the “Beals Point” keyword? If possible, please identify one or two specific photos that appear in Desktop’s 647 results but are missing from Web’s 625 results.

That will give us a concrete missing asset to trace rather than only a difference in totals.

Best,
Anshul Saini

S

Susan25434440uq8dAuthor

Participating Frequently

This problem is still not sovled and it is actually insane how Adobe refuses to do anything other than make their products worse and worse each day.

R

randomnothing

Inspiring

I am appalled at how bad lightroom web performs with searches. It is almost universally wrong even when using the filter to apply the specific keyword I am looking for. It is baffling that the web version returns different results than the lightroom cloud desktop version, all while using the keyword filter as suggested. And the cloud desktop version sometimes returns different results than classic. Something is seriously broken here.

E

Eva22852282dhf2

Participant

I'm seeing the same problem in Lightroom Web, but the workaround suggested here (Filter > Keyword) does not solve it.

I have many keywords missing from the Keyword filter list. For example, I have a photo with the keyword "kenn" visibly assigned in its Keywords panel. However, when I go to All Photos > Filter > Keyword, "kenn" is not present in the keyword list.

Searching for "kenn" in the main search also doesn't work as an alternative because the new semantic search returns photos that do not have the keyword "kenn".

So currently there seems to be no way in Lightroom Web to reliably retrieve all photos containing a specific keyword:

The main search returns semantic matches that don't contain the keyword.
The Keyword filter does exact filtering, but many existing keywords are missing from its list.
The missing keywords are definitely still attached to the photos.

I am using Lightroom Web only. Is this a known issue with the Web/cloud keyword index?

S

saschal87596115

Participant

It is not possible to search for an image by the filename. The search for a filename, like DSC123456. returns 42 results in a single album (while searching in quotes “DSC123456” returns 56 results in the same album). The resulting image selection appears random.

This is a serious issue that will results in hours of manual work. Nothing against AI assisting me, but if I know exactly what I am looking for, just give it to me - and not 46 variations of it.

This happens with all albums, not only recent ones.

While you are at it, it would greatly improve things to be able to search for multiple file names in one go, not just a single filename.

guillaumee22862743

Participant

My issue is almost the same.

I'm working in a specific album, let's call it "MAX". My search filter is already set to that album, and I need to find a specific filename.

When I search, Lightroom shows me around 50 matching photos, but the highlighted one is almost never the correct one.

The strange part is that the photo I'm actually looking for is in the search results, but it's always located all the way to the left of the filmstrip. Every single time, I have to manually scroll back to find it.

This makes searching by filename very time-consuming and defeats the purpose of the search feature.

S

saschal87596115

Participant

I noticed that the correct image seems to show up first - that's something at least. Maybe your sort order needs to be reversed, if it's maybe the last image in your case?

guillaumee22862743

Participant

Hello,

I am experiencing the same issue with Lightroom's search function.

For example, when I search for a specific filename such as DSC04152 in the search bar, Lightroom does not automatically select or highlight the photo. Instead, I have to manually scroll through the folder to find it, which can be extremely time-consuming when dealing with large numbers of images.

Even worse, sometimes the search does not find the file at all, and it appears to completely disappear from the folder view after the search.

This is becoming very frustrating because I rely heavily on searching by filename to locate specific photos, and I am losing a significant amount of time trying to find images that should be easy to locate.

Has anyone else experienced this issue, or is there a known fix?

Thank you.

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @davidr73669643 @Susan25434440uq8d,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing your feedback. I discussed this behavior with the product team.

For searches that are intended to be constrained by keywords, the team recommends using the Keyword Filter (funnel icon) rather than relying solely on the natural language search box.

The examples you’ve provided, such as “PABU” + “female” and person-name searches returning unrelated semantic matches, are helpful because they highlight cases where natural language relevance and keyword matching may not align with the expected workflow.

Could you please confirm:
• Are the values (e.g. PABU, female, person names) stored as keywords, captions, or both?
• If you use the Keyword Filter instead of the search box, do you get the expected results?

I’ll continue sharing examples like these with the team, as they help illustrate workflows where users are expecting strict keyword matching rather than broader semantic search behavior.

Thanks,
Anshul Saini

davidr73669643

Participating Frequently

They are stored as keywords.
Yes, using the filter for keywords gives me the expected AND desired result.

Thanks. But I have something else to share with whatever team needs to hear it.

Some of us are not as fond of AI “improvements” as programmers seem to be. In fact, some of us would like to avoid it entirely, and would appreciate tools or settings that allow a user to turn it off completely so that we can’t even use it by mistake. The rationale behind that is not because we hate progress, or don’t like change. It’s far deeper than that, AI consumes resources such as water, space, fuel, and electricity at a prodigious rate. The natural world, including the birds I like to photograph, is truly and irreversibly diminished by that resource consumption and the climate change that it will contribute to. In a trade-off between the natural world and a newer more clever way to search images, I’m firmly in favor of the natural world.

Your mileage may vary, and others might agree with you, and that’s fine. I’m not asking for Adobe to remove this “feature” for all; I’m merely asking for a simple one-time switch to turn it off for myself (and others who might think as I do). Yea, the funnel/filter that you pointed me to will work, but it’s a kludge that needs to be invoked every time I do a search, because I will never ever want to use the semantic version. So a way to turn it off generally would be appreciated immensely. At the very least point users to some sort of documentation that allows them to understand the funnel/filter option; the fact that I and other users were unable to figure it out without coming to this forum is at least a clue that additional clarity and communication might be helpful…

Thanks again

cehilton

Participating Frequently

source collection from LR Classic and LR web copy both contain 1,890 photos. Searching LRC for “Carrigafoyle” returns 14 photos which is the correct number. Searching LR web returns 1,048 photos.

davidr73669643

Participating Frequently

Single-term searches work fine for me as well. But my question was about a search that contains two parameters, PABU and female. That search, or others that combine two terms in order to find a subset of the available images, brings up dozens of irrelevant images of females, as if the search engine was ignoring the other search term. Similar two- or three-term searches fail miserably as well.

davidr73669643

Participating Frequently

Agree 1000000% I have tagged my photos with metadata tags that have always worked. Now they don't. For example, I use bird banding codes for bird species, e.g. PABU is Painted Bunting. Previously a search for “PABU” and “female” brought up all my images of female painted buntings. And ONLY those images, no other images were retrieved. Now that same search brings up some painted bunting images and lots of images of my spouse, my daughters, etc. Additionally, it omits lots of images of painted buntings; they are not retrieved by the “improved” search engine.

This is useless. Please

Post a reply to these questions so that we know Adobe is listening.
Give us an option to revert to the previous search engine, or
FIX IT!

R

RedeemingLight

Known Participant

The search and keyword function is now completely broken in Lightroom web. I add keywords to images directly in the web interface, and an hour later, they still do not show up when searching for those exact keywords. This is unacceptable, and I will need to find another option for creating this image library.

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi @RedeemingLight,

Thanks for reporting this. For keyword constrained searches, please use the keyword filter by selecting the funnel icon.

The behavior you’re describing, where keywords added in Lightroom Web are not searchable even after an hour, is not something we’d expect to see normally.

Could you please try the search again using the funnel > Keyword and let us know whether you’re still seeing the same delay?

If the issue persists, it may help us determine whether this is something specific to your account or an isolated indexing issue rather than expected search behavior.

Please also let us know:
• Approximately how long it takes before newly added keywords become searchable
• Whether this happens with all keywords or only certain ones

Best,
Anshul Saini

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.