New Lightroom Classic update, New MacBook Pro Update, Dropbox move and now LR won't work offline

[Lorinda30199924tmno]

Since updating to newest Ventura 13.4 on my MacBook Pro, Apple made Dropbox move the Dropbox folder to a more secure location.  It had to resync all my .7 TB of photos to new location, and took a week to resync.  I also have the newest Lightroom Classic update.  Now I can't edit using Lightroom Classic when offline. It continues to freeze after editing the 1st 5 photos. what is happening? I'm a photographer who flies a lot and I moved from Lightroom CC a couple years ago to Lightroom Classic so I could edit photos while flying and offline. I thought it would work after everything was synced but it is not.  Do i need to get off Dropbox? Help.

[Conrad_C]

I don’t know the full solution because I don’t use Dropbox with Lightroom Classic. But as far as getting off Dropbox, the problem is probably related to how Apple recently changed how they require cloud sync services to work if they integrate with the Mac desktop, as Dropbox does. Which means any other cloud sync services you might try might have the same problem, if they also integrate with the Mac desktop.

In reading about it (Apple’s File Provider Forces Mac Cloud Storage Changes — TidBITS), it’s possible that the problems and freezing might be happening because in the new way that macOS is syncing, not all of the data is actually being stored locally. Lightroom Classic could easily become confused if it looks for some files (database, images, cache files, previews…) and they are not there on your computer because they are in the cloud and not downloaded. The linked article gives many reasons this might now break: Disconnected local folders, broken file reference paths, loss of external drive support, local placeholders instead of real files…

The cloud sync in Lightroom Classic itself (syncing Lightroom Classic collections to Lightroom Photos in the cloud) is probably not affected by this, because it does not directly integrate with the Mac desktop. But of course, Lightroom Classic can sync only collections and images enabled for syncing, and only from one catalog.

Can you talk more about why you were using Dropbox with Lightroom Classic? Was it as some kind of backup, or to edit the photos from different computers? That would help figure out a better solution.

[Lorinda30199924tmno]

Hi - thanks for your reply.  I use dropbox as a place to store projects I am done working on due to space limitations and I set these folders to ONLINE only.  I recently started working on a web site for my photography business, so I would change to MAKE AVAILABLE OFFLINE which, in the past release, would copy them down to my MacBook Pro and I could review and edit them while flying.   Many were taken before I started using LrC and so with the new tools available I have much better post processing ability and was specifically excited about the new feature to reduce noise which works so great.  Since the Apple update and the new Adobe update happened at the same time I wasn't sure what the problem was.  Since I last posted this problem, I connected with Adobe and they had me go back to the previous version of LrC and now everything works just fine offline so the problem seems to be with the new LrC version working with the new Ventura 13.4 Mac OS.  

I hope they will work on it and make them work better together.  The other surpising thing that I don't understand and sine You are deemed an expert, is it doesn't appear to release as much space as expected on my MacBook Pro.  I really don't believe I have that many photos downloaded on my computer, yet my System Data folder is 487 GB.  The OS is about 10 GB and my iPhone photos are about 156 GB, Documents are about 110 GB.  I made an appointment with the Genius Bar and the Apple Tech told me Drop Box is probably in the System Data.  System Data should be between 30 GB and 60 GB.  What the heck is in System Data.  When everything got moved it was over 800 GB until that process was up-to-date.  Any ideas what is going on here?

[Conrad_C]

…it doesn't appear to release as much space as expected on my MacBook Pro.  I really don't believe I have that many photos downloaded on my computer, yet my System Data folder is 487 GB.  The OS is about 10 GB and my iPhone photos are about 156 GB, Documents are about 110 GB.

By @Lorinda30199924tmno

Free space on recent versions of macOS is becoming a tricky thing to work out, especially for less technical users. It’s no longer like it was when all we had to do was subtract the space occupied by files from the capacity of the volume. With the new types of temporary files that macOS now uses, advanced techniques like cloning that APFS uses to save space, and how macOS decides to count them against the free space, has gotten a lot more complicated. Some explanations are on Howard Oakley’s blog: Explainer: Disk free space and Free space on an APFS volume is an illusion. I have a feeling that a lot of Apple Store techs may not be fully up to speed on this subject.

The changes to how macOS counts free space have affected things like Photoshop scratch files: The free space reported by the Scratch Disk preference now often disagrees with what the Finder says, so Photoshop sometimes says there’s no space for its scratch file when there should be.

One method that can sometimes reconcile free space amounts is to use Apple Disk Utility to delete any Time Machine local snapshots. These can be large, and they count against free disk space in the Finder until they are automatically purged after a while, but they are not normally visible. So people can’t understand why free space is going down, they delete lots of files, but that doesn’t increase free space as much as it seems like they should, and it’s sometime because of files like those snapshots. It is safe to delete local Time Machine snapshots as long as your permanent Mac backups are up to date, because the local snapshots are temporary.

[Lorinda30199924tmno]

Thanks - this problem went away with newer versions of the OS and Adobe LrC.

[DdeGannes]

Have a look at the article available at the link below. I provides additional info.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/catalog-on-dropbox-beta/

[dj_paige]

Its not clear to me what you did as a "resync", but there is really no re-sync needed when photos move to a new location. You do need to re-connect within LrC and this shouldn't take a week, it shouldn't even take an hour, its like 5 minutes at the most.

The freezing is most likely a separate issue. Is there an error message? Is there a particular action in LrC that seems to cause this? Do you just restart LrC to continue; or is the entire computer frozen and you have to restart the entire computer?

[JohanElzenga]

@dj_paige The resync is in Dropbox (i.e. between the Dropbox servers and your local computer), not in Lightroom.

[Lorinda30199924tmno]

thanks  - this problem went away with new updates to both the OS and Adobe LrC