How to force the LRC to work only with smart previews

Report · Aug 04, 2023

I have a MacBook with limited storage and use Onedrive to compansate it .

I copy the SD card content to a folder within Onedrive folder of the computer then I import them from this location in to LRC with smart previews built in. LRC used to use only smart previews when I made the files unavailable in the computer but stored only in the cloud (they are stored in the Onedrive cloud but not the actual drive of the computer).It was a perfect solution for me as most of the times smart previews were enough and I could make available manually in the computer's drive when I needed.

But weirdly, LRC now tries to download the file from cloud to be able to edit them. Old imports are still accessible only for smart previews and work fine but my recent imports shows both original+ smart preview and LRC tries to download the original file. That makes the process longer and slower as downloading the files take time.

Has anyone had a similar issue? Do you have any solution for this?

Thanks for answers in advance

Report · Aug 07, 2023

When I import Dropbox files into Mac LR 12.4, build smart previews, then tell Dropbox to make the files online only, they stay online and LR uses the smart previews in Develop.

But when I do this with Onedrive, I observe the same thing you do: LR causes Onedrive to download the files.

I think what might be happening: When you open the file in Develop, LR is needlessly querying the file system to see if the file exists. Dropbox responds to LR that it doesn't exist, so it uses the smart preview. But Onedrive responds to that query by downloading the file, even though LR still uses the smart preview.

I can't verify my hypothesis because Apple has broken the invaluable "dtruss" tool for tracing system calls.