Lightroom IPad locally stored photos

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
July 13, 2026
2 replies
14 views

I am trying to find where my locally stored folders/images are located on my iPad, I can’t locate them.

Correct answer Claire H.

Hi @secondmac, Welcome to the Lightroom Community Forum! The Lightroom on iPad is designed to import and retain original images in its app cache. You can’t actually access the photos on the hard drive unless you’re in Lightroom. All you’ll see is that the Lightroom application is taking up additional space on the internal storage without actually seeing any of the individual files. If you want to free up space on your iPad, go to Lightroom's “Local Storage” settings and clear the cache. I hope this helps! ^CH

S

secondmacAuthor

Participant

Thanks for the great and informative response. I believe I was mistakenly thinking that the images stored locally would be in a separate “local” album. I discovered that they are still in the original album but are stored locally and not in the cloud.

Thanks for the assist!

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

Just to be clear, when you sync an image to the cloud that cloud image becomes the “master”. Depending upon which app it was synced from, and what the local settings are for that app, the original local image may well be automatically replaced with a locally-stored preview (stored within the app’s local cache). However, there’s always the option in the various apps to locally store an individual original image or a complete album of originals…..but that would be in addition to the “master” image(s) in the cloud. The “masters” will always remain in the cloud regardless of the local app settings unless/until the image is manually deleted from the cloud (which can be done from any app).

Claire H.

Correct answer

Community Manager

Hi @secondmac, Welcome to the Lightroom Community Forum! The Lightroom on iPad is designed to import and retain original images in its app cache. You can’t actually access the photos on the hard drive unless you’re in Lightroom. All you’ll see is that the Lightroom application is taking up additional space on the internal storage without actually seeing any of the individual files. If you want to free up space on your iPad, go to Lightroom's “Local Storage” settings and clear the cache. I hope this helps! ^CH

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.