P: Sync kills my internet

Report · Apr 26, 2017

So many times I've come home and tried to use my computer on Wifi and found it to be excruciatingly slow. Dead slow, like 60 second web page displays. My wife and I have cursed our Charter Cable connection many times. BUT...know I see that it is not Charter's fault, IT'S THE FAULT OF LIGHTROOM MOBILE.

I have realized that if I come home with any new, unsynced photos in LR Mobile, the syncing takes over the internet. I can barely do anything. When I swipe away the app to close it, voila!, my internet is super speedy again. Start up Lightroom Mobile again, and bam!, near-dead internet.

So that is PROBLEM #1: LR Mobile syncing need to be optimized somehow to not suck up all of my bandwidth. It is not my Charter Cable, which is super fast normally. No other app that uses the internet screws it up either. Just LR Mobile.

PROBLEM #2 has been discussed over and over and over again here, with no interest from Adobe to address the issue. There is no way to pause syncing, or preferably, only sync when I tell it to. Without this ability, I have to remember to close the LR Mobile app as soon as I get home. If I want to look at any of the photos I took, I have to go into Settings and turn off WiFi, which means many of my other apps won't work during this time.

Between these two problems, I'm thinking of dumping my otherwise-beloved LR mobile app for another camera app.

Report · Apr 26, 2017

Can we get a little more specific on internet speeds please Mark? Can you run the free speedtest at http://www.speedtest.net when speed is good, and again when it's abysmal please. That'll give us somewhere concrete to start.

And is this the iOS or Android mobile app?

_______________________________________________
Victoria - The Lightroom Queen - Author of the Lightroom Missing FAQ & Edit on the Go books.

Report · Apr 27, 2017

I ran speedtest.net. First, here is a result without LR syncing, and I ran it several times and it's typical.

RackMultipart2017042791742tue8-ee16fb21-ad9a-435a-a049-23b6ddbf32db-869580154.png

Then, here is one I got with LR syncing:

RackMultipart20170427388931a6m-02ca7a89-c42b-4674-b4fd-85581af38713-1364012408.png

However, it appears I got lucky with that one, even though it trashed my internet speed. Because here is what I often get in my retries:

RackMultipart20170427521351rna-6ce14110-2033-4a2b-adc9-0ac71feffccd-531857554.png

...followed by:

RackMultipart20170427917427yh4-0f36fcda-b530-44b0-ab48-8851a59064ef-561117433.png

Once LR is done, speedtest is back to working fine and giving me high speeds.

Report · Apr 28, 2017

If you are syncing many images or videos you will might use more bandwidth but this should be for a limited time. Could you tell us how many images are about to be uploaded from the device?

What would help would be to know exactly what device you are using for the Lr Mobile app.
Also please let us know all places where you notice the slowdown.
E.g:
1. Is the slowdown as noticeable on the device that you are running Lr on (if on e.g. your iPhoneX)
I.e. does it also take ages to load a page in your web browser on that device?

2. Is the slowdown most noticeable on another machine or device - if so it would help to know what wireless standard they support as well as if you can see on which .

Concerning #2 - this might be a very technical question but if you are using a dual band router it might support it but not handle it too good. So a verification on this point would help a lot.
Any information about 2.4 or 5 Ghz might also be helpful.

Report · Apr 28, 2017

It could be any number of images, from a half dozen photos to 25. Of course, the shorter the impact. But, syncing is very slow.

The device is an iphone 6S.

The slowdown is noticeable on everything. On macbooks and imacs. Literally, minute long web page displays, and sometimes connection errors where it can't even load a web page.

I'm not home now to tell you the wireless standard, but it's either 2.4 G or N.

Don't know about my router, not home to check. But it's an Apple Airport Express, the square one that lays flat, not the tower, I think maybe 4th generation.

I have no other issues where any syncing, from icloud to crashplan, that syncs online where it kills my internet. Other than LR Mobile, everything is always speedy.

Report · Apr 30, 2017

I just tried it—on El Cap with Apple Airport Express, probably same generation. I could surf, click links, just fine while syncing between LR and LR Mobile. It didn't seem to affect pages loading. I do tend to limit what I allow to sync, which perhaps helps. I rarely sync large folders, and this one I just tried with only had 25 images.

Report · May 02, 2017

Ok, thanks for the information.
Knowing that you are connected over an Apple Airport Express also helps.

Btw - I've pinged you off-thread.

Report · May 02, 2017

"Btw - I've pinged you off-thread."

Do you mean you sent me a private message or something? I don't see any notice of a message. ??

Report · Jul 21, 2017

I'm getting the same thing, except my internet is way slower than yours to begin with. I could BARELY load this page... also I cant seem to set LR mobile to sync during xx hours. If it killed my internet between 2-4am, that would be fine, but not when I get home!!!

Report · Jul 21, 2017

This is the biggest issue I have with Lightroom Mobile. There are many times when I just want to import some photos, make some edits and share them out. I have no requirement or desire for these images to be sync'd up to the cloud but I have no way of preventing it from happening. I understand syncing is fundamental to a lot of what Lightroom does but why not give the user control back so they can choose if they need this functionality or not?

Report · Jul 22, 2017

Me too. In fact Lightroom mobile kills my modem forcing me to reset it before ANYTHING else will connect to the internet. But when it works I love it.

Report · Jul 22, 2017

Figured out a work-around until they fix it. On the iPhone if you double-tap the main button, then scroll to LR window & swipe up, it force-stops the app running. What I will do is open the app just before I go to sleep. That way I kind of manually schedule when it locks up my internet.

Report · Jul 22, 2017

Yes, I have been doing that or shutting Wi-Fi off on my phone. I have unlimited data so if Lr tries to sync on my data plan it isn't a disaster. But now my iPad is doing it too and I only have Wifi on that device. I just bought and installed a new modem. I am hoping that will help. While I was doing that I was on the phone with tech support and they said that there seems to be an issue with my connection, so they are sending out a technician Monday to look at it. I hope this can be fixed because I sure love using it.

Report · Jul 24, 2017

We should be able to sync over local Wifi of USB between mobile device and desktop when at home.
This is a serious issue to have to go over Adobe's server each time...

Report · Jul 24, 2017

Have you added your +1 to the feature request? https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_mobile_local_sync

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

Report · Jul 24, 2017

How do I do that?I don't see a +1 anywhere.

Report · Jul 24, 2017

He really means vote. That's your "+1" <BG> Upper Right, so you don't have to wander all over looking for it.

Report · Apr 26, 2018

I see this issue on Lightroom CC desktop as well. It seems that Lightroom is using 100% of the available upload bandwidth, which ultimately kills my cable modem and requires it to be rebooted.

The solution I've found is to use a proxy like Charles and throttle adobe servers to 75% of my upload speed, but it's not ideal, and it only works on desktop.