LR 13.0.2 and Apple M2 Ultra essentially uselss working on JPG's on a server

[e_c3]

I have around 40,000 server-based JPG's loaded into a catalog. I cannot get Lightroom to do two consecutive tasks (I'm only editing metadata fields) without quitting the program and reloading. It could be 1000 photos, or it could be 1. It's becoming nearly impossible to do the tasks I need to do with the program acting the way it is.

For instance, before I started writing this, I tried to change the flags for 8 images. I get the "Remove Flag" notice, but nothing happens. No progress bar. Just crickets. Just went back, same result.

Also the filters are broken for me at times. For example, if I have Date as one of the filter attributes and have the filter activated to only show me unflagged photos, it will work as I go through different dates. But then if I click to the top to All, the images that are flagged and which should still be subject to the "no flag" filter will show up.

I have not had this issue with previous versions of LR and/or Intel Macs.

[Califdan2]

Where is your catalog?   Internal drive?  Locally attached external drive?  Some place else?

How much free space is available on your internal drive and the drive where the catalog is?

Is the folder contraining the catalog participating in any sort of cloud sync system (not including the Adobe LR sync) that keeps the data in the cloud or keeps an up to date copy in the cloud?

[e_c3]

Local drive, 1.25 TB free. No cloud settings on, 100% on the local machine

[johnrellis]

As a very first troubleshooting step, update to the latest version of LR, 13.1.  (Do the menu command Help > Updates.)

[e_c3]

Updated, thanks. It's possible that there's some very minor improvement, but it's still at a point where I remove keywords and it takes up to a minute or two for the change to reflect in the files affected

[johnrellis]

Some more troubleshooting steps to narrow down the problem:

1. Do File > Optimize Catalog.

2. Do you have Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP enabled?  If so, try disabling it. In recent versions, Adobe has been futzing with the code that writes .xmp sidecars.

3. 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.

4. Copy 5,000 photos to your local drive and import them into your catalog. Still have the issues?  If not, that indicates some issue between LR and the server.

5. Create a test catalog and import 5,000 photos from the server into it (using the Add option, not the Move or Copy option!).  If the issue no longer occurs, that suggests an issue with your catalog.