Library.lrlibrary file

[2catdiva]

I use Lightroom cc classic 2019 and find that my Library.lrlibrary file is over 400 GB.  It is taking up a great deal of space on my hard drive!  Is there a way of making it smaller?  Can the file be deleted?  

[Ian Lyons]

The Library.lrlibrary file belongs to  Lightroom (desktop version that syncs with Adobe cloud) not Classic. Do not delete it or it will just be recreated again from the Adobe cloud.

If the file is 400GB in size then this would suggest that you've configured the application to store the original photos (files) on your computer as well as the Adobe cloud. 

Before doing anything rash, I suggest you open the Prefernce panel and check whether the local storage option for storing originals is checked or not. In below screesnhot, I show the checkmark as active which means that the originals will be stored locally. To disable this feature, simply remove the checkmark. This will allow Lightroom to remove some of the originals when it calculates that the disk space you're specified for the cache (also shown in screenshot) has been reached. You can adjust the cache size to a lower value if you think it's set too high.

[2catdiva]

Thanks for your quick response. I see that the file is now 218 GB. Here is a screen shot from me. I have unchecked the “Store a copy of originals at the specified location” and restarted the program. Below is the screen shot which shows more available space but the file didn’t change. What do you think? Should I lower the cache size too? PastedGraphic-1.png PastedGraphic-2.png PastedGraphic-3.png Merrie

[2catdiva]

I contacted Adobe and found out that I could delete the file and the program would generate a new one. First, however, I needed to look at the contents of the file, which included a large number of pictures, to make sure that I had them somewhere else. I did.

My problem was that where were image files that were sent up there and then I decided not to use that much space but the size never changed.