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

[Sameer K]

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:

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. 

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

❸  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. 

❹  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 

[John R Ellis]

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

[simsharala]

How?

[John R Ellis]

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

[Earth Oliver]

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...

[TheDigitalDog]

"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.

[simsharala]

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.

[TheDigitalDog]

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. 

[Randy Hufford]

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

[Dale24462030k1he]

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

[TheDigitalDog]

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

[John R Ellis]

"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/

[Dale24462030k1he]

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. 

[John R Ellis]

"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.

[Dale24462030k1he]

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

[John R Ellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this existing thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/quick-tips-how-to-give-full-disk-access...

[NikonNomad]

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.]

[John R Ellis]

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/

[NikonNomad]

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.

[John R Ellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/quick-tips-how-to-give-full-disk-access...

[ulft1963]

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?

[dj_paige]

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/quick-tips-how-to-give-full-disk-access...

[John R Ellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/quick-tips-how-to-give-full-disk-access...

[James261772764r0m]

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

[daved54980649]

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