(Win) Lightroom Classic Persistent metadata sync issue

[Conlan22262704ms4k]

I have been having a persistent issue with syncing in LRC. I use Classic on my desktop and sync to Lightroom Mobile to be able to make changes to images or send things out to clients while I'm away from my office. Every now and then, for no apparent reason, sync in LRC will get hung up on one or multiple images. In the sync activity box these images will say "Metadata" in the sync details/errors column. No additional information is provided. Sync for these images seems unable to complete, leaving other images in the "queue" unable to sync either. So far the only workable solution I have found to unblock syncing when this occurs is to remove the affected images from Lightroom, but obviously this is not ideal. This error seems to affect images at random, it affects images of every file format and can happen as soon as an image is imported or to an image that is months old. Any idea what might be causing this or how to prevent it?

[Sameer K]

Hi @Conlan22262704ms4k. Welcome to the Lightroom Community. I'll need more info to help you figure this out.

What version of Lightroom Classic & the operating system are you working on?

Please share the screenshot of the following options from Preferences > Lightroom Sync.

If you are storing the sync database of originals on an external drive, Lightroom might be accessing the original from the external drive.

Try these steps

• Check the images pending sync & apply flags/ratings to these images.
• Log on to Lightroom Web (https://lightroom.adobe.com) to check current Sync issues on the left part of the screen.
• Let Lightroom Classic sit idle for some time to let it resolve any pending sync issues on its own.

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!
Sameer K

[Theresa J]

I just want to chime in here and say that I have been experiencing the exact same sync issues. Most recently, LrC showed it was trying to download metadata info for two images. This created a bottleneck for everything else trying to sync. On Lr web, those images said they were waiting for information from LrC from 4 months ago. This isn't possible because the day before the sync was up to date. I fixed the problem by deleting those two images from Lightroom. Next time, I will try the trick to add a rating with Lightroom web. Seems like a pretty janky fix though.