Participating Frequently

P: Lightroom 14.1 & 14.1.1 stops showing metadata after 5 to 10min of work spinning wheel

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
December 13, 2024
67 replies
10483 views

After updating to LHR classic 14.1.1 LHR stops shwoing metadat in the lybrary module as well as in the developement module (loupe info).
Closing LHR and deleting the files: ...Helper.Lrdata, ....Previews.Lrdata as well as ....Sync.Lrdata helps, as they are created each time new when starting LHR.

But after working for about 10min all the metadata disapears again.

I have installed LRH fresh and reset all settings. Nothings seems to help.
I have a attached a screenshot but I wonder if that helps - there is just that spinning wheel.

Any suggestions?

P.S. I have a large catalog with about 200.000 photos in it but have had no issues so far. Big Windows PC with plenty of power.

Windows

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johnrellis

Legend

@Tony Tea: "if I use the library filter in the library grid view then they show, but the keyword management functions don't allow viewing, deleting or assigment"

1. Try deleting the Helper.lrdata folder:

a) Do Catalog Settings > General > Show to open Finder / File Explorer on the current catalog folder.
b) Exit LR.
c) In that folder, delete the folder "<catalog> Helper.lrdata".
d) Restart LR, and it will rebuild the folder.

The Helper.lrdata folder caches information about metadata, keywords, folders, collections, and other things to speed the performance of LR and it can sometimes get corrupted. In recent versions, LR has used it more heavily to improve the speed of displaying metadata, and there have been a fair number of bugs with it.

2. If that doesn't help, in Library select a photo that the Library Filter bar indicates has keywords. Then post a full-resolution screenshot of the entire LR window, showing the Library Filter displaying the keywords and also the Keywording and Keyword List panels. Such screenshots often display helpful clues.

T

Tony Tea

Participating Frequently

I shutdown Lightroom, deleted the helper file and reloaded. It was a bit confusing - at first some of the Keywork management functions seemed to see a list of all the keywords, but nothing appeared in the metadata. After closing and reopening once more even the keyword list disappeared.

Here is the screenshot you requested.

In the mean time I have uninstalled 14.5.1 and replaced it with 14.5.4 (keeping the preferences from the 14.5.1 installation) - which seems to be working fine.

Kind regards

Tony Tarry

T

Tony Tea

Participating Frequently

None of my keywords are visible to the Keywording tools (Keyword Tags, Keyword Suggestions, Keyword List.

The keywords are in the files - if I use the library filter in the library grid view then they show, but the keyword management functions don't allow viewing, deleting or assigment

Tried resetting preferences - no change....

T

TUX24170726lkc9

Participant

Thanks Michael24063370x4f4 for analyzing and reproducing the behavious with my files. What is really annoying that there is currently no way to detect the corrupt images despite trial&error as Michael and me did. It might be interesting for Adobe to priovide another minimal example of such a "spinning-wheel-bug-catalog" in order to find a common pattern. After I identified the causing images I exported these images to a new catalog and reopened it - the example I provided here.

M

Michael24063370x4f4

Participating Frequently

Investigated this further with my own catalog. I took a copy and removed all of the virtual image copies and restarted LR after deleting the LRHelper file. It did not solve the problem - the spinning wheel came back.

However, I thought the principle that the catalog entry for a particular image had somehow been corrupted and was causing the metadata and spinning wheel issue seemed possible. So I systematically deleted groups of image entries from Lightroom (not the original images themselves) and restarted it each time (after deleting LRHelper file) until I had narrowed down whereabouts in my catalog the problem could be. This has worked and I have identified the image files that are causing the problem - all were from a specific time and in this case were in fact video files.

I have opened my original catalog in LR, removed these files, restarted LR and then resynchronised the folder to bring them back into the catalog and it now works. I can see the metadata and create key words.

So 9 months later I can use new features that I have been paying for...

M

Michael24063370x4f4

Participating Frequently

I can confirm that I can reproduce the error using the catalog provided by user TUX24170726lkc9. When the catalog is opened there are two images and two virtual copies. LR shows the spinning wheel, there is no metadata visible and no key words can be added. If I delete the virtual copies and restart LR the spinning wheel goes away, metadata shows and I can add keywords. If I subsequently create new virtual copies everything seems to work ok.

So "some" virtual copies seem to be causing it. The issue is I have hundreds of them so don't know how to find which are causing a problem in my catalog (if I assume it is the same problem). It would take hours if not days to check every one.

This is progress, though why we are having to carrying out debugging for Adobe is an interesting question.

T

TUX24170726lkc9

Participant

After extensive troubleshooting, I discovered the cause of a persistent issue in Lightroom Classic. It appears that Lightroom gets “stuck” when dealing with two specific virtual copies of two different files. This results in the following behavior:

No metadata is displayed for any image in the catalog.
The spinning “Loading Metadata” indicator remains indefinitely.
In this error state, metadata is also not shown in the info overlay in the Develop module for any other photo.

From my perspective, this looks like a bug, since this should definitely not happen.

Important Note:
This issue could not be reproduced with other virtual copies in the same environment. It seems that in this particular case, the catalog was put into some kind of corrupted state triggered by these two virtual copies.

Steps to Reproduce (Test Catalog included):
I have exported a small test catalog that reproduces the issue. You can download it here:
Download Test Catalog + Images

Open the catalog in Lightroom Classic (you may need to manually set the location of the photos).
Observe: the spinning loader (“loading metadata”) appears, and no metadata is displayed.
Workaround:
- Delete the two virtual copies
- Close Lightroom.
- Manually delete the Helper.lrdata file belonging to the test catalog.
- Reopen the catalog → metadata display works again.

Additional Notes:

What makes this particularly frustrating is that Lightroom does not indicate which files are causing the problem. I had to manually remove files from my huge catalog one by one until I identified the cause.
The fact that Lightroom requires manual deletion of the Helper.lrdata file before the issue resolves strongly suggests a catalog/metadata handling bug.

Request:
Could Adobe confirm whether this is a known issue?
It would also be great if others could try reproducing this with the provided test catalog to rule out a system-specific problem.

my enviornment:

Lightroom Classic 14.5.1 (the same happens in 14.5)

Windows 11

CPU: i5-13600K

GPU: GTX 4070

all files are local

J

Jupiter987

Participant

I solved this problem by using a backup of my catalog. Since the backup is regularly taken there was no loss. The "test integrity" tool does only half the job, forget it with this problem. Also delete/move folder with the cached pictures/thumbnails.

M

Michael24063370x4f4

Participating Frequently

I first reported this issue back in Deember 2024. I have now tried version 14.5.1 and the issue persists. The metadata and keywords disappear and the wheel keeps spinning. I have left it for hours and it never stops. Deleting the Helper.LRdata file and restarting resolves the problem briefly but then it all disappears again and the wheel starts spinning. This has failed in 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, 14.4 and 14.5. In effect all further upgrades on Lightroom are not available to me and clearly several other users as well. Can anyone say what needs to be done or is anybody looking at a big fix for this?