Removing a synced collection from mobile: removes the collection but keeps the photos

[Chris-90562525]

Like many people I think, I only use Lightroom Mobile (on iPad) to organize or work on collections temporarily. Once the work is synced back to my main Lightroom library, I don't need them on my iPad anymore and I don't really want the photos taking up all that space on my iPad. 

What's frustrating is that when you stop syncing a Collection in Lightroom desktop (i.e. click the little two-way arrow to the left of the collection, pictured below), it removes the Collection from the Lightroom Mobile (good), but for some reason it keeps all the photos in Lightroom Mobile. What's the point of that?

And there doesn't seem to be an easy way to remove all those photos from the iPad.

What's the correct workflow here?

[99jon · Accepted solution]

Photos sync’d from the desktop app are smart previews (smaller DNG proxies) and LR Mobile optimizes disk space unless you are actively editing photos.

The only exception is if you capture images using the iPad and upload the originals to the cloud. But even in that case, it is possible to delete originals from camera roll without affecting what is sync’d.

[john beardsworth]

It is a change, the idea being that photos can now be synced without being in a collection. Maybe there's some validity to it, but I also prefer the previous approach.

They don't take up much space on the iPad unless you enabled offline editing in a collection. When you remove a collection, that space should be freed up.

The way to get the photos out of LrMobile is to go to All Synced Photos (Catalog panel) and remove the photos from there.