Cleaning up locally stored raw files (Android)?

[Wurstkrapfen]

Occasioanlly I use LR Mobile to import my RAW files from the camera when I'm out for a longer time. Problem is the camera stores all the raw files as a copy in its own folder structure. 

Those raw files are synced with the cloud now, I put them in the right folders on my PC after cloud download, they are still in the cloud.

I don't need that copy in my local phone memory. How do I get rid of them?

And no, just deleting the whole apps storage is not an option because I have synced about over a hundred albums with smartpreviews for local storage, those I want to keep. And it would be a pain to resetup this.

[Wurstkrapfen]

The App itself says it uses 173 GB,  the folder (I have access too on an unrooted device) "Android/Data/com.adobe.lrmobile" holds only 40 GB, what about the rest?

[Jim Wilde]

Have you tried the "Clear Cache" command on the app's Settings>Device Info & Storage tab? That should remove any locally stored originals that have already been synced to the cloud. I assume that in the Settings>Preferences you have "Only Download Smart Previews" enabled?

[someone2]

Yes I did "clear cache" before posting, it got me down from 220gb to the mentioned 173gb.

Did not have that option checkes, but as I said that device is importing and uploading the raw files, not downloading them. 

[someone2]

Also I'm just using 42 GB of my cloud storage. 

[someone2]

On a different device (with the same smartpreview folders marked for "store locally") it takes up 70gb of memory, but also this was used to push original files to the cloud that later got moved to a desktop folder and reshared as smart previews. So there's probably some abandoned Cr2 files in there to. 

[Jim Wilde]

The only thing I can suggest that might be causing this is "Deleted" items. When you delete an image from the cloud it is not immediately deleted, instead it's placed into the "Deleted" album, and they stay there for 60 days (to give the user time for a rethink, or to recover from an unintended delete). They don't count against your cloud storage, but IF these were first imported into the mobile device, then synced to the cloud, then deleted in Classic, then resynced as smart previews, it's entirely possible that those originals are still sitting on the mobile device until the 60 days expire. 

However, you don't have to wait the 60 days, you can manually remove the images from the Deleted album, which permanently erases them and should delete them from the mobile device. So, have a look in the Deleted album and try to ascertain if any images there were first imported via Lightroom Mobile. If so, and you need the space on the mobile back, try removing them from that Deleted album (you can do that either from the Lightroom Desktop app or by using the LrWeb app in your browser). You might need to Clear Cache again after removing images from the Deleted album, if you do find that's the likely cause.

[Wurstkrapfen]

Good idea,

there was stuff in the delted folder, but removing it did no free anything up.

What if I have moved an imported CR2 in LR Mobile into a different folder than the "import folder", Is it possible there are originals stored I will never find again because I can't distinguish between oringal file and smart preview?

[Jim Wilde]

Did you run the Clear Cache command on the Android phone after permanently deleting those images?

I'm not sure what you mean by moving raw files into a different folder, i.e. if you were doing that in Lr Mobile (you can't put images directly in Folders there, as they are just containers for Albums) or doing it in Classic (which would have no affect on Mobile as the images still remain synced even if you do move them around in Classic).

You can determine if the images in the cloud are Smart Previews or Originals on a per image basis by tapping on the image's sync icon at the top of the screen, that tells you what is stored both locally on the device and in the cloud. To review the state of the overall library, you can use the Lightroom Desktop app (All Photos>Filter Bar>Sync Status) which will show 'Synced and Backed Up" for originals, and "Synced from Lightroom Classic" for smart previews.

I'd also enable that option to "Only Download Smart Previews", that avoids any originals being downloaded to the device when you use the "Store Locally" option on specific albums.

But at the end of the day, if the amount of local storage being reported on the Device Info & Storage tab of the Settings menu is greater than the amount of space being used in your cloud account, as per the Settings men>Account tab, then I think the only option to sort that out is likely to be deleting and re-installing the LrMobile app. 

[Wurstkrapfen]

Yes I did clear the cache.

Yes I meant moving them into another album.

Going through 70k photos one by one to find a few 100 that might be original files instread of previews sounds not sensible. I don't use LR Cloud Desktop (takes to much space on C: that can't be configured otherwise).

[Wurstkrapfen]

And if I delete the app cache completly, which I don't want to do, because I would have to get 100 albums with smartpreview to store locally again, which is a pain since LR mobile doe's not sync in background (but not fixed for ages). It would'nt be much help because after a few month, using the phone to import and upload stuff it will be clogged again.

[someone2]

If I open the Android app info where I can see how much storage space the app uses it says 43GB, where are the additional 127GB stored if Android is not aware of them? 

[Jao vdL]

Are you syncing them to Lightroom Classic or to Lightroom Desktop on your PC? If you are syncing to Classic, you should just unsync them there by deleting them from the "all synced Photographs" special folder and they will get deleted from all your other devices. If they are synced to Lightroom Desktop, you need to somehow convince your phone to offload them from local storage. That should happen automatically when they are uploaded into the cloud after a short while (perhaps one or two days). At least it does on my iOS devices. You do need to open Lightroom on the phone for this to happen and not be opening those images for editing on the phone.

[Wurstkrapfen]

Classic