Lightroom becomes unresponsive when scrolling/navigating thumbnails in any view.

Report · Feb 26, 2022

Version: 5.2 20220128-1049-86119e0

CPU: I7-8700K

GPU: GeForce GTX 1080TI

OS: Windows 10 Pro 10.0.19043

For many months now (it may be over a year at this point) I've had problems running the Windows application for lightroom CC. At one point it worked excellently, I was able to rapidly workthrough fresh imports, now it's impossible to get through any bulk amount of photos due to all the freezes.

When scrolling through photos in any of the thumbnail views (Square, Photo, or Filmstrip) the application becomes unresponsive for 30 seconds to a minute and one of my CPU cores will be at 100% for the duration. Basically any action that will require the application to display additional/different thumbnails results in a temporarily unresponsive application, this includes resizing the window itself in any multi-photo view.

I have no issues while actually editing photos, provided I don't accidentially navigate the filmstrip while doing so.

I've tried turning on/off the setting for storing a copy of smart previews, no difference.

I've tried many of the suggested troubleshooting related to performance issues for lightroom, but what adds to the frustration is many of these articles (by Adobe and elsewhere) are targeted to Lightroom Classic, not the cloud application, and many of the steps are not applicable or menu options do not exist.

I have tried using the application with GPU acceleration on and off, there is no difference.

The application works fine on my relatively lower powered laptop with no problems (other than lower performance which can be attributed to it being a less powerful machine)

Report · Sep 13, 2023

I reinstalled windows, problem solved.

Sorta feels like a "screw it, nuke the problem" solution but the system was doing some other weird behaviour I couldn't explain and it had been a while.

Report · Aug 14, 2024

sorting through and removing and rearranging photos in the lightroom classic library is an enormous part of my daily workflow. sorting tasks that used to take 15 minutes are now taking me hours due to this lightroom behavior. Im afraid im going to have to reinstall windows as you suggested. just wanted to check on if this was a permanent solution for you before I proceed.