How to sort images by file size in Lightroom?

[cryanhorner]

In Lightroom CC, I keep being prompted that I'm almost out of storage space.  To fix this, I want to sort my library by file size so I can delete the largest files.  Can anyone help me figure out how to sort my library by file size?

Thanks.

[JP Hess]

There is Lightroom Classic, and there is Lightroom. There is no Lightroom "CC" anymore, so I assume you are referring to Lightroom. There isn't an option to sort images by file size in Lightroom OR Lightroom Classic. 

[cryanhorner]

I was talking about the online version, so i guess that is just Lightroom
now. Why no option to sort by file size? Will this ever be added? Seems
like pretty basic functionality. Thanks for any info.

[selondon]

You cannot sort by file size from within the app.

The best place to add a feature request is on the following forum, which is monitored by the engineering team:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/categories/photoshop_family_lightroom_cc

[cryanhorner]

it has been 3 years and still this extremely basic funciton is not available.  can we please get this added? 

when space is running low for cloud storage, the obvious move is to sort by size and remove the largest files that are taking up the most storage, but that is not possible currently, and it's hard not to cynically assume that you're doing this on purpose to make it as hard as possible to work with, to force people to buy more storage space instead of cleaning it out.

[Sameer K]

Hey there! I'll help you figure this out in a different way.

While we currently don't have the option to sort by size. You can free up space on the Cloud using the new Archiving option available in Lightroom Desktop: https://adobe.ly/3wKlSZS

Let me know if this helps. Thanks!
Sameer K

[cryanhorner]

Hi Sameer,

I appreciate the effort to help, but if I can't sort by size, then it wouldn't do anything to help me know which files were taking up the most space, so I wouldn't know what files to archive.

Additionally, most of these files already live locally on my drive because that's where they were originally produced (typically in photoshop, I add them to lightroom / cloud storage for the sake of accessing them remotely), but don't really need to save them back to the drive because that would just create a duplicate. 

Removing them from the cloud storage would be sufficient, but when you have ~16,000 image files currently showing under "all photos", finding and removing specific files by searchable (or at least sortable) criteria, like file size, would be the sensible solution.

Is there an intentional reason that this function has been omitted for so long?

[lost_art_photography]

I think LR is intentionally weaponized to make managing your cloud storage space as difficult as possible to keep you from maximizing the utility of the 100GB plan, and upsell you more cloud space where they make a bunch of subscription money...

Sad to see these anti consumer practices. You also can't sort to see which cloud files are originals vs. smart previews, AND it appears they removed the ability to even sort by "Not in any album" so that you could more easily clean out photos you don't care to have synced (deleted the albums but photos stay in 'all photos').

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

@lost_art_photography I don't think there's any conspiracy here, I don't remember seeing a feature request for sort by cloud space, or if there is, it's rarely requested. 

Not in any album still works:

 

And you can see which ones are smart previews (Synced from LR Classic) vs. originals (other options) in the Sync Status pop-up.

[alittletoofrank]

One workaround which I could suggest is to instal Omni Disk Sweeper and choose that drive/folder to sweep. It'll show you the whole list of files where the largest are at the top. You can then click to view in the finder, or simply delete from within Omni. This will then make the file offline in lightroom of course.