Exit
  • Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
  • 한국 커뮤니티
0

20 minutes or more to start up?

Explorer ,
Oct 11, 2025 Oct 11, 2025

Whenever I load Lightroom it can take 20 minutes or more to start up before I can do anything with it, it's very frustrating.  Is there anything I can do to speed it up? I'm running it on an iMac (from 2019, not the most up-to-date model) with plenty of free space.

All comments / suggestions welcome

TOPICS
macOS
49
Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Adobe Employee ,
Oct 29, 2025 Oct 29, 2025
LATEST

Hi @RichardDouglas,


Thanks for reaching out. I can understand how frustrating it must be to wait that long for Lightroom to start up. Let’s narrow this down together.


First, please update to the latest Lightroom 9.0, which includes several performance improvements and startup optimizations. Once updated, could you try launching it again and see if the delay continues?


To help us diagnose the issue more precisely, please share the following details:

 1. Where are your photo files stored?
 • On your local Mac drive
 • On an external drive
 • On a network drive
 • Or synced via Creative Cloud

 2. Can you create a short screen recording showing Lightroom’s startup, from when you launch it until it becomes responsive? This helps us show the behavior directly to the product team.

 3. Please try creating a new test catalog:
 • Go to File > New Catalog,
 • Save it locally on your Mac (not on an external or network drive),
 • Then see if Lightroom opens faster with the fresh catalog.

 4. Finally, go to Help > System Info, copy everything, and paste it here. That’ll give us important details about your configuration (macOS version, GPU, memory usage, etc.).


Once we have this information and your recording, we’ll forward it to the Lightroom team for review and next steps.


Best,
Anshul Saini

Translate
Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines