P: Syncing no longer possible - sync icons do not appear

[The Keeper of the Garden]

Syncing Collections is no longer possible in LrC 13.0.1. on macOS Sonoma 14.1.1.

1. Syn is on (in LrC and in Adobe Creative Cloud app on desktop).
2. No error messages anywhere (not in LrC, not on Lightroom on the Web, not in Adobe Creative Cloud app on desktop).
3. Collections cannot sync because "Sync with Lightroom" command (on right-click) is not present/available/visible.
   
   
   

[The Keeper of the Garden]

I am willing to bet a lot of money that I'm right. Why? Because the cause is the same. So the remedy will have to be the same. 
I'm fed up with this kind of "DIY" support. Editing such files is NOT a solution, it's actually fiddling around. The real solution has to come from LrC itself, not from customers who are losing precious time and their patience trying to make things work that should actually never stop working. Syncing to the Creative Cloud should work. Always. Perfectly. Because we pay for it!!! And Without customers having to fiddle with files they don't even know what they actually do.  
I've found several workarounds, which should already give enough clues to IT engineers of what the real cause is. In my IT experience, it's a server-side issue. Because it seems to affect more and more users, one after the other. And they experience all the same symptoms. 
We are losing time, patience, and money (!) fiddling around to make something work that should work without any hassle. Cut all the AI rubbish and make LrC once again a streamlined, easy-to-learn, easy-to-use program, without a totally cluttered UI in the Develop Module. Less is More. Less useless non-photographic gimmicks means More true photography. AI makes people dumb, lazy, and bad photographers.

[d.bydand]

I tend to agree with your statement. I have been working on a family Christmas collection to sync with Lightroom to display on my iPad and Apple TV on Christmas day for our family. Well, I guess that gift is shot because I can't sync. I will need to figure out a work around which probably means hours of more work. Ugh. It should just work as it always has. A solution weeks down the road is not helpful.

[The Keeper of the Garden]

In LrC go to Preferences (Settings) and make LrC prompt you to choose which catalog to start up with. Then the sync options will appear, and no need to fiddle with files or click on things whenever you start up LrC again. But this is a workaround, not a solution.

[Sean McCormack]

When the post were merged, I couldn't post my actual reply to the original thread I was responding to. And in the reply I said, I believed it was a server side issue and any solution would involve forcing the server to respond. 

And FWIW, noone is paying me to help here, so complaining at me or any other of the Community Experts here is pointless. 

And I absolutely disagree on the AI masking, that's one set of features that are definitely easy to learn and use that make a huge speed difference when editing. True photography? Surely that involves film, handheld meters and chemcials? Or pouring collodion on a plate perhaps. Either way it has nothing to do with the issue at hand and won't be solved before the start of January. 

[The Keeper of the Garden]

I'm not complaining. I'm making a statement about how LrC has become a tool the most essential elements no longer work reliably of (renaming Published Folders and now for the umpteenth time syncing issues). You're not being paid? I'm neither, not by Adobe and now no longer by potential buyers of my work... Thanks to the fact that I had to delete all my synced albums from the Creative Cloud.
Disagreeing on the utility of AI is fine, patronising me on how you think I define "true photography" is not. AI masking is useful? Well, perhaps, but you need the latest and greatest and most expensive computer to have it work smoothly, not to mention the HDR displays, which cost the price of a second-hand car... I'm a fine art photographer, art historian, art critic, lecturer on art and archaeology. I'm not a commercial photographer who can charge his clients whatever he thinks will pay him that latest and greatest computer setup, the latest and greatest cameras and lenses and studio lights, and and and... 
I read your original reply. I didn't comment on that. I commented on the fact that I already lost three weeks of work trying to solve a problem that should have been solved before season holidays started, if only it had been taken seriously. I know my IT. I've even worked as an IT engineer and support engineer, back in the days when software did what it had to do, and when support wasn't relying on AI but was actually being on the phone with the customer until the software and hardware did what it was supposed to be doing. I'm talking WordPerfect, early 1990s. 
And yes, I nowadays see much better and much more honest photography coming out of the dark room than what is put out digitally, because it's become virtually impossible to know if a human being made the photo, a robot, a monkey, a snail, or an algorythm coming out of Russia, Corea, Japan or China...

[Sean McCormack]

Actually I wasn't patronising you on True Photography, I was pointing out that once you start setting boundaries on what entails it, where do you stop? It's not something that you can gatekeep, because art doesn't work that way. You clearly know that, given your experience. FWIW I want to go back to doing Wet Plate and agree on the dark room.  

I'm coming into this conversation on syncing issues a month after you. I'm not gonna be up to speed on this at the rate you are. I've seen this issue but a restart helped every time, so my experience neither matches nor negates yours. Coming from an IT and support background, you'll also know that to fix a problem, you need to be able to reproduce consistently enough to fix it. So the first attempt is creating a file that will force sync. Isn't that the first thing you'd try? 

I wish I was the commercial photographer you were talking about because while I do have the latest and greatest laptop, it was replacing a 10 year old one and hurt quite a lot in purchasing because I spilled tea on my desktop computer. 

Is the timing on this with the holidays bad? Absolutely. Will they fix it when they get back? Hopefully. Oil and squeaky wheels. Is Sync a perpetual bed of bugs? For Classic, it's definitely not as robust as with Lightroom Desktop. 

[Kevin5DD6]

i have spent hours and days trying to find answers for all the Lightroom Classic bugs.  i'm a struggling photography and these bugs are not allowing me to finish my work and share photos thorugh Lightoom cc.  Why can't Adobe figure this out!!!!!

[d.bydand]

This is above my pay grade, LOL.

When I go into Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/

I see a bunch of folders - Auto Layout presets, colour profiles, develop presets, device icons, etc. but all folders have nothing that ends in .lua.

I don't understand what I am creating with a text editor. 

[Sean McCormack]

The file doesn't normally exist. 

@The Keeper of the Garden has a workaround above.  and I quote:

In LrC go to Preferences (Settings) and make LrC prompt you to choose which catalog to start up with. Then the sync options will appear, and no need to fiddle with files or click on things whenever you start up LrC again. But this is a workaround, not a solution.

[derMueller]

Seit einiger Zeit startet bei mir die Syncronisation von Lightroom Classic nicht mehr automatisch. Zur Zeit nutzte ich V 13.1 das war aber schon bei den V 13 Versionen so, dort hatte ich aber noch deutlich mehr Probleme mit der Syncronsiation. Alle meine Anfragen beim Adobe Helpdesk liefen ins nichts, gehholfen haben nur die letzten updates. Meist fingen neue Mitarbeiter an alle Fragen nochmals zu stellen und lasen sich nicht in den Fall ein. Am Ende waren die englischsprachigen Spezialisten dran, die tatsächliche andere Fragen stellten aber auch keine echte Lösung fanden. Rückrufe die diese ankündigten erfolgten niemals. Vom Service bin ich extrems enttäuscht !

Nun scheinen sich die Probleme auf den nicht erfolgenden automatischen Start der Syncronisation zu beschränken. Mein Work-Arround, Sync pausieren und nach ein paar Sekunden Sync wieder starten.  Danach funktionierts bis zum nächsten LRc Start. Hat jemand einen Tipp was man noch machen könnte ? 

[The Keeper of the Garden]

Hello,

I have the same problem, which isn't a new one as it happened to other users as well in the past.
I suppose you are using a Mac computer with macOS Sonoma, like I am?
I have done all kinds of "repair" jobs to see if the problem would go away, but no, it's definitely a bug, which hasn't been acknowledged yet as one by Adobe! 
Nothing helped or helps to get syncing to the Adobe Cloud (Creative Cloud) to start automatically (as it should and did in the past).
What I have done (listed in random order):
1. Use the Adobe cleaning tool to "clean" all apps, files, and settings. Then reinstall everything. No change.
2. Reset preferences in LrC. No change.
3. Log out of the Creative Cloud apps on all devices, restart computer and then log in again. No change.
4. Create a new catalog, import some photos, and have this new catalog synchronise to the Creative Cloud. No change. Also in a new catalog, syncing doesn't start automatically! Which proves it isn't a problem related to the catalog file itself (in other words, it's not corrupted).
5. Check the integrity of the catalog file with the LrC tools (about five times), just to be sure it's not corrupted (although point 4 already proved that...). No errors were found. Problem is not solved.
6. Check the integrity of the catalog file using the sqlite3 tools. No errors were found and sqlite3 found the catalog file to be "OK".
7. Have LrC rebuild the sync data. Then restart syncing. No change.
8. Have LrC delete all the sync data. Then restart syncing. No change.

9. Empty the app caches. No change.

The symptoms are clear: Something is not working in the LrC app or in the data files it uses to sync! It could also be a permission problem or a cache problem.

The real problem now is: Even if the problem is solved by an upcoming release of LrC, can we still trust that the Collections and Photos we've synced in the past, remain properly synced?

What I have noticed, and it's even weirder than the problem itself:

1. When I double-click on the catalog file to open it in LrC, the problem does NOT appear! The syncing is started and all the syncing options and user interface details about syncing re-appear!   
2. When I choose to have LrC prompt me at startup which catalog to use (I only have one), and open that catalog, the problem is not there either! All syncing options appear and all seems normal!
3. When I choose to have LrC open the "most recent catalog", the problem is back! No syncing options visible nor active.
4. When I choose to have LrC open the same catalog every time, the problem is back! No syncing options visible nor active.
5. When I choose "another catalog" in the "prompt me at startup" popup window, and I choose the catalog (the only one I have) manually, the problem is back! No syncing options visible nor active.

Because I've run through so many different "repair" procedures to get rid of the bug, because I'm not the only user having this problem, and because I've run thorough verification and integrity checks (with LrC but especially with sqlite3), I'm sure my catalog file is not corrupted. It HAS TO BE A BUG. And it needs to adressed asap by Adobe. Syncing is essential in the workflow of professional photographers!

[derMueller]

Thanks - very detailed view and tips. At the moment my workaround - pause sync and restart - works. I hope that Adobe will fix this asap. 

[The Keeper of the Garden]

See this thread, which I started a few weeks ago already...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-syncing-no-longer-possible-sync-icons...

[Seattlefella]

This worked for me - forced catalog selection on startup.

[The Keeper of the Garden]

1. Have you read the comments and remarks above your post? Adobe Engineers are investigating the issue. But it's holiday season, so I guess it could take some time before it's taken care of...
2. Go to Preferences > Lightroom Sync, hold down the Alt/Option key, and press the button for "Generate Diagnostic Report". Put the resulting zip file on a Cloud service and then message Rikk Flohr here on this thread to share it with him.
3. The easiest workaround for now is to set LrC to prompt you upon every start to choose the catalog you work with. In my case, then the sync options always appear. Another workaround is to double-click the catalog file itself, which will start LrC and force it to open that catalog, after which also the sync options appear as expected.

[Sean McCormack]

And bear in mind this is a merged thread, so the comments you refer to didn't exist in the the original thread. 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Update: 

Thank you to those of you who've provided the diagnostic logs requested. Unfortunately, they revealed no further clues for the issue you are describing. 

The engineering team has requested additional logs from you that will require you to deploy a config.lua file to enable additional logging. 

1. Close Lightroom
2. In your /Users/'username'/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom directory, deploy the config.lua file attached here. Note: the file is called 'config.txt' so that it will attach to this forum post.  You will need to rename it to 'config.lua'. 
   
3. Launch Lightroom and let sit idle for 5 minutes (make sure syncing is not paused.
4. Collect logs from the ~documents/Adobe/Lightroom folder and package them into a single "zip" file.
5.  Send to me using the same method as was used for the diagnostic logs. 

Thank you for your patience!

[The Keeper of the Garden]

Two remarks:

1. When you say in #3 "make sure syncing is not paused", does that mean we need to use a workaround to make the sync options appear? Because when we start up LrC the usual way, the cloud icon in the upper right corner says "sync on" but the sync options do not appear (and thus sync seems to be off, not on...). I've made sure the sync options are visible and thus sync is on (not only relying on the cloud icon). 
2. In my case at least (on macOS Sonoma) the logs appear in the ~Documents/LrClassicLogs folder, not in the one you mention.

The zipped logs file is already available where you found the previous LrSyncDiagnostic.zip file. 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

for 1. If the icon does not show syncing is active, yes. 

for 2. That should be a correct folder

Resend your link. I no longer have the previous link. 

[The Keeper of the Garden]

Almost two months after I noticed syncing options and syncing status are unavailable or not functioning correctly, there still is no solution!

[Gord Webster]

Glad I found this discussion. I too was experiencing the Collection sync options not showing, despite Sync status showing everything was up to date. My quick solution was to pause syncing, then restart syncing, and... voila!
I've changed LrC to ask me which catalogue to open at start-up. That workaround works for me.

[karenb63732604]

my lightroom classic no longer gives me an option to sync collections so I can put them on adobe on the web.   IN the cloud icon, iot says they are all synced.     What happened? 

[KR Seals]

I have seen that a couple of times a while ago. Closing LrC, restarting the computer and Opening LrC always cures it.

[The Keeper of the Garden]

See this discussion: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-syncing-no-longer-possible-sync-icons...

Adobe engineers are trying to find the cause of the problem. 

[Gord Webster]

I found that clicking on the cloud icon, then choosing "Pause Syncing", then "Start Syncing" would make the sync status in my collections appear again.
Then I found that it resolved the issue when I changed when LrC starts to "Prompt me when starting Lightroom" to choose which catalogue I open. I just need to remember which catalogue to open, in case the catalogue selected is not my default catalogue.
Go to Preferences > General and change it from your default catalogue, to "Prompt...".
Hope that this workaround resolves your issue until there is a fix from Adobe.