Adobe Lightroom Classic 15.1 Crashing

[camilla_0564]

Working on MacOS Tahoe 26.1

My Lightroom keeps crashing when I'm working on some of my catalogs (usually larger ones). This started about a month ago with the Tahoe update. It only affected 1 catalog in the beginning, and now another one of my catalogs is crashing continuously. 

Lightroom is updated (uninstalled and reinstalled). I reset preferences and tested the integrity of the catalog. Turned off "hover previews". De-selected "Use Graphics Processor".  I have no idea what else to try, please help!

[Claire H.]

Hi @camilla_0564, welcome to the Lightroom Classic Community forums! Thanks for sharing some of the steps you've taken to troubleshoot. Let's try a few other things to see if it helps:
1. Test with a new catalog with the photos that were crashing a few at a time. If it works fine, the issue may be specific to the Catalog.
2. Optimize your catalogs using File > Optimize Catalog. If they are very large, consider splitting them into smaller catalogs.
3. Disable all third-party plug-ins via File > Plug-in Manager and restart Lightroom.
4. Make sure Lightroom Classic has full disk access and verify you have at least 20% free space: https://adobe.ly/4jqdkLn

If none of these steps resolves the issue, we can continue troubleshooting. I hope this helps! ^CH

[camilla_0564]

Hi Clarie,

Thanks for the quick response!

Point 3) and point 4) – check!

Point 2) LR crashed while trying to optimize

Point 1.) It took about 5 minutes to uplaod 20 photos to a new catalog, but so far I can edit them without issues.

What do you think I should try to do next? Forgot to mentions that both the catalog and the RAW files are saved on an external drive connected with my macbook. Thanks

[Sameer K]

Hey, @camilla_0564. Thanks for the update. Please temporarily move the primary/old catalog and related files from the external drive to the internal drive. Then, open Lightroom Classic with the new catalog that you've created with 20 images. Go to File > Import from Catalog > select your primary/old catalog.

Proceed with merging the previous catalog into the newly made, internal storage-based catalog. For more help via video-based steps, please visit this link. See https://adobe.ly/3NTC9Rv

You can choose to keep the previous catalog around or delete it. Once you're back on track, you can move the newly created catalog to the external drive. If it appears to be unstable again, it might not be Lightroom Classic, but rather the external drive hardware that is failing. 

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!
Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

[dj_paige]

2. Optimize your catalogs using File > Optimize Catalog. If they are very large, consider splitting them into smaller catalogs.

By @Claire H.

I think this is really poor advice, and I would not advise this. Splitting the photos into smaller catalogs defeats the purpose of the Library Module, and eliminates a benefit that people expect (and most people actually receive this benefit) of one large catalog. Lightroom catalogs should work fine with hundreds of thousands of images. I am not aware of a situation where a catalog crashed because the catalog is too large. And it doesn't look good for Adobe to sell software with certain features, like it can handle large amount of photos, and then Adobe employees tell users to stop using those features.

I also think catalog on an external drive is not the problem, unless the drive itself is malfunctioning, or the catalog is corrupted in which case moving it to an internal drive will not remove the corruption. Sometimes the suggestion from @Sameer K to import the catalog into a brand new catalog fixes some types of catalog corruption.