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🔎 Quick Tips: How to give Full Disk Access to Lightroom Classic on macOS

Adobe Employee ,
Apr 29, 2022 Apr 29, 2022

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LrC HEADER .jpg

 

How to provide Full Disk Access on macOS

 

Since macOS 10.14 (Mojave), Apple introduced a new privacy structure to help ensure that all applications obtain user consent before accessing documents, downloads, desktop, iCloud Drive, and network volumes. This has been reinforced in newer versions of macOS. This change prevents unauthorized access to user files and folders.


When Full Disk access & Accessibility permissions are needed, users may be asked to or be required to change the setting in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy for Lightroom Classic manually.   

While for the File & Folders access, the user is prompted to allow or deny when needed. 

 

Why provide full disk access to Lightroom Classic?

Insufficient or broken permissions may restrict Lightroom Classic from functioning correctly and break your workflows. All tasks that require access to the computer's storage importing/exporting images, cross-app workflows, reading/writing metadata,  and more, behave unexpectedly. It may also lead to missing images, performance issues, unexpected sync issues, and random app crash on launch or while working on a file. 

 

Watch this video for the steps:

 

MohitGoyal_0-1686770353032.png

 

 

Quick steps to enable full disk access and grant permissions to Lightroom Classic

 Follow these steps to prevent the permissions issues from occurring: 

 

❶  Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Click the Lock icon > Authorize via password > Unlock the lock to allow changes to system settings. 

SameerK_0-1649863460950.png

 

  Add Lightroom Classic by clicking on the (+) button & navigate to the Applications folder on macOS.

 

SameerK_0-1651070095792.png
 

  Go to Full Disk Access and add Lightroom Classic by clicking on the (+) button & navigate to the Applications folder on macOS.
Note: Adding Lightroom Classic under Full Disk Access overrides Files and Folders settings. 

 

SameerK_1-1651063386869.png

 

 

  Click the Lock icon to save the changes. Restart your computer to see the applied changes. 

 

 

Stay tuned for more tips to come.

 

Related links:

Lightroom Classic system requirements 

Quick Tips: Optimize LrC preferences for better performance 

Basic troubleshooting steps to fix issues in Lightroom Classic 

 

 

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LEGEND ,
Apr 29, 2022 Apr 29, 2022

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Consider pinning this at the top of the forum -- it's one of the most frequent issues currently.

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Community Beginner ,
May 05, 2022 May 05, 2022

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How?

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LEGEND ,
May 05, 2022 May 05, 2022

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Only a moderator can pin a post to the top of the forum.

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Mentor ,
May 08, 2022 May 08, 2022

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Why does this need to be done manually? Is there not a way for Lr to do this during the install or update? Not having this pref set can result in data loss and i seriously doubt that most Lr users will ever see this post...

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LEGEND ,
May 11, 2022 May 11, 2022

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"Is there not a way for Lr to do this during the install or update?"

 

No, it can't be done automatically; it's part of the new(er) OS security. I know of no Mac software that does this until the user does so manually at least once. Thereafter, it's fine. 

 

https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/Allow-Mac-full-disk-access/

Full Disk Access permission is a privacy feature introduced in macOS Mojave (10.14) that prevents some applications from accessing your important data, such as Mail, Messages, TimeMachine, and Safari files. This means you need to manually grant permission for certain applications to access these protected areas of your Mac.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

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Community Beginner ,
May 11, 2022 May 11, 2022

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If it's impossible to do it automatically, you should get a message directly from LR telling you what to do. I've lost many hours trying to fix it and thinking I've lost my catalog.

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LEGEND ,
May 11, 2022 May 11, 2022

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If it's impossible to do it automatically, you should get a message directly from LR telling you what to do.

 

Some software products will pop an 'error' and provide such a message with instructions. Some even automatically open the System preferences for you. This would best be requested by the following: 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/how-do-i-write-a-feature-request/idi-p/123863...

So this is doable. 

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

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Community Expert ,
May 19, 2022 May 19, 2022

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Thank You. I will link this to lots of threads!

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Community Beginner ,
May 15, 2022 May 15, 2022

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Hello Everyone, 

I have been using lightroom Classic for years and I have an issue that I have been trouble shooting with no avail so I'm looking to you smart people for help. My folder and images are already imported in lightroom, and are in the same folder on my external hard drive (I didn't move any images). I signed out from one adobe account to another account and now my presets aren't showing up and the images says that "The file could not be found. Lightroom is not allowing me to import more presets because it says that the presets are already loaded. 

 

I have already tried resetting my Lightroom preferences, restarting the computer, signing in and out of my account, unplugged and plugged back in the external hard drive.  There wasn't an option to find missing images.

 

Lightroom Classic 11.3.1

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LEGEND ,
May 15, 2022 May 15, 2022

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In preferences, Store Presets with Catalog; if you toggle this on (or on then off), any difference? 

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

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LEGEND ,
May 17, 2022 May 17, 2022

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"the images says that "The file could not be found""

 

Something changed in Mac OS 12.3.1, and many people are finding they need to grant LR Full Disk Access. See
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/disk-permissions-monterey-classic/

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Community Beginner ,
May 23, 2022 May 23, 2022

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Thank you for your suggestion! My removable disks were already selected. I toggled it off and on and restarted the app and it still had the same problem. 

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LEGEND ,
May 23, 2022 May 23, 2022

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"My removable disks were already selected. I toggled it off and on and restarted the app and it still had the same problem."

 

That's in the Files And Folders section of Preferences > Security And Privacy > Privacy.  Instead, you need to grant Full Disk Access -- see the help article I linked to for details.

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Community Beginner ,
May 24, 2022 May 24, 2022

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I was incorrect the first time I posted. I granted Lightroom full access, restarted my computer and now it works!!

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LEGEND ,
May 24, 2022 May 24, 2022

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Community Beginner ,
May 21, 2022 May 21, 2022

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Having upgraded to a new M1 Max MacBook Pro, running Monterey, using Lightroom Classic 11.3.1, everytime I put an SD card into the machine to import RAW files into Lightroom, I cannot see the preview files. It just says "Preview unavailable for this file". I know perfectly well that Lightroom supports these Nikon RAW files. This is the same for different camera models, so seems to be Mac/Lightroom related. Once imported the files are fine. It's also very slow to pick up the files when initially selecting the card: it initially shows "No photos found", before deciding some seconds later, that actually there are files there, but refuses to show the previews, however long I wait. Any ideas?

[moved to discussions - Mod.]

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LEGEND ,
May 21, 2022 May 21, 2022

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Something changed in Mac OS 12.3.1, and many people are finding they need to grant LR Full Disk Access. See https://www.lightroomqueen.com/disk-permissions-monterey-classic/

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Community Beginner ,
May 22, 2022 May 22, 2022

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Initially after changing the disk access, it no longer said "Preview not available" but didn't actually show the previews. After a 2nd reboot though, it works as normal! Brilliant! Thanks so much.

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LEGEND ,
May 24, 2022 May 24, 2022

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Community Beginner ,
May 14, 2022 May 14, 2022

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Hello folks. I have an external hard drive to which I import my photos from Lightroom. The folders has suddenly been read-only when I import new photos, without me having done anything to indicate that this has happened. However, I can save to disk in other ways than from Lightroom, such as moving files from local disk via Finder to the external disk. But moving files in Lightroom from a folder on local disk to a folder on the external disk is not possible. Can't figure this out. Anyone have any tips?

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LEGEND ,
May 14, 2022 May 14, 2022

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LEGEND ,
May 24, 2022 May 24, 2022

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Community Beginner ,
Sep 18, 2022 Sep 18, 2022

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Will this also need to be done for Photoshop or is it just Lightroom Classic?

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New Here ,
May 12, 2022 May 12, 2022

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Hi All,

I'm in the process of migrating LrC to a Mac Studio from a 2015 iMac. The image files and catalog are stored on an external drive. Intially it seemed that all had gone well linking the Catalog and image files in Lightroom but I'm have two issues:

1. When I try to open an image from Lightroom > Photoshop I'm getting an error: "Lightroom Unable to Prepare the Selected File".

2. Some of the images also have an exclamation point in the upper right "There was an unknown error while writing the metadata to this photo"

Any help on resolving will be much appreciated. Thank you 

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