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Participating Frequently
May 15, 2018
Question

LR Mobile sync is so slow it's ridiculous.

  • May 15, 2018
  • 8 replies
  • 13199 views

I love LR mobile... until I need to get something out of it. Then I want to repeatedly punch myself in the face because the design of it is a complete and utter nightmare.

Mobile sync is stupendously slow. I'm not on a fast connection, but something is obviously broken with it. It takes about 30 minutes to upload a single dng file.

And, I need to use the sync because I can't just select everything and export originals. That would've been the kind of thing a normal person would build as an option into their app. But Adobe? Oh no. Let's make everything as painful as humanly possible.

Can anyone at Adobe comment on why, since the app came out, uploading has been as broken as a pile of glass jars at a barn dance?

This topic has been closed for replies.

8 replies

Participating Frequently
July 9, 2021

This is exactly why using he cloud is a non starter. Lets look at the data transfer speeds.  Many people have high download, BUT NOT HIGH UPLOAD, so you mights have 72 down but barely 10 up and many people only have about 1-2 up. What does that mean, well ?

Your file is a modest 20mb, upload is 10mb, transfer time 16 seconds

change that to 1mb and now you are looking at 2min 40sec !!! for just 1 picture

 

My Sony A7R4 file is 120mb  transfer is 10mb upload for 1 file is 1min 36sec 

Today I took 100 pictures so I need around 150 mins, almost 3 hrs to upload those pictures

 

When Apple designed icloud they were uploading and still are, small files, Adobe Engineering has completly lost the plot on this and not taken into account who their audience is and how they use their product (oh by the way I use to do this for a living so am professiionally qualified to comment)  this would have never got off the starting blocks in any of my design meetings

 

Participating Frequently
July 7, 2021

I'm having the same issue. Admittedly, I'm an "on-again/off-again" app user because of this issue. My current phone takes pictures comporable to a 10 year old DSLR wihth a kit lens, and I frequently take advantage of the feature that allows you to shoot photos in dng right from the phone. But those photos stay on the phone in upload purgatory. I've tried logging out and logging in (suggested above) and sometimes it works well enough to free up one photo. I just speed tested my connection and I'm getting 9.8mbs down and 8.88mbs up so I know it's not this connection.

Participating Frequently
July 7, 2021

*comparable - is there not a way to edit posts if you make a typo?

Guilherme de Assis Brasil
Participant
January 11, 2020

I'm facing the same problem. I'm using the Lightroom Mobile (v. 5.1.0 93E03A) on my iPad Pro (9,7' | MLMV2LL/A) with iOS 13.3, and the synchronization process is absurdly slow. It's taking more than an hour to sync 91 photos (Canon SL2 RAW file). The iPad is connected to wi-fi (5Ghz), and it isn't an Internet connection problem because using Lightroom on my MacBook Pro (on the same network), I don't have this problem.

 

PS: I have no problem with downloads, just on uploads.

Participant
April 15, 2021

Still an issue. Any fix provided by Adobe here?

Incrddibly slow to upload a few pictures , plus it is also draining the battery at blazing speed . Poor app overall in my experience on IPhone SE. 

Inspiring
November 30, 2019

Sync speed is fine for me but change images and I'm staring at a swirling circle for half and hour. Adobe has never been good at cloud. Their engineers are incompetent and their service doesn't scale to demand as it should.

Participant
June 14, 2019

I am experiencing the exact same thing for 4 to 5 months now. my internet speed is 10mbps and even if I use 4G mobile data still does not resolve the problem. I leave it to sync on my ipad pro 2018 for the entire day and only able to sync 1 to 3% only. my files are raw files from my canon 6D and 5D mark iv. on my laptop the sync files also takes way to long to sync and it just stops and a lot of the pictures are still missing. this is so so so frustrating I want to throw everything out of the window. i've been trying to sync my shots from korea for 3 months now to my laptop and still not complete. and it seems that adobe is not even responding to this thread?

Participating Frequently
June 17, 2019

Hi Aaron,

please make sure that you have finished importing all images (tap on the cloud button to open the menu).
Once all imports are done, please logout and log in again.

That should solve your problem.

Thanks,
Ignacio

Inspiring
December 26, 2019

Is this the most clever answer you are able to give us? This is clearly a problem since ages ago, are you making any change to fix this problem?? Very annoying!

Inspiring
May 11, 2019

Me too.  This is freaking ridiculous.  I can't get my photos out of my android.  They are all there in LR Mobile All Photos, but I can't find most of them anywhere in my folders.  I've given up on getting anything to sync to the cloud reliably.  I just want to plug my android into my USB and get my photos.  What the hell is wrong with LRM?

Participating Frequently
May 16, 2018

If I choose to export the photo as original to the camera roll and then look at the size (via an exif app) the size is reported at 3mb.

I have 95 in my queue. I even took my phone to work today and set it going with a massive upload speed and... nothing happened. It’s still like watching a plant growing.

Thanks for talking to some people about it Mike... getting stuff out of LR mobile is like the bane of my existence. Love the app for everything else... but just simply transferring things to LR Classic or anywhere else is always frustrating and often ends in a pile of mess.

Akash Sharma
Legend
May 16, 2018

Hi Reactor10k,

Sorry about the slow upload speeds with Lightroom mobile app on your iPhone 7.

Could you please check which exact version of Lightroom mobile app are you using on your mobile?

Does the app always runs in the foreground while images are being synced? Also, do you have a different mobile device available(at your home or office) to check if the upload speed are slow on Lightroom mobile app(signed in with your Adobe_ID)?

Regards,

Akash

Participating Frequently
May 16, 2018

Hi Akash... thanks for joining the thread!

It’s v. 3.2.1 674202

I left the app running for a while in the foreground (open). My iPad seems equally slow. A bit later today I tried again at work and then suddenly things flew along and uploaded quickly. So, either the problem has magically resolved itself, or LR Mobile just hates a slow network, and becomes much slower than other apps when uploading.

On a side note, can you comment on why people can’t select lots of files at once and export the originals?

Michael J. Hoffman
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 15, 2018

I haven't seen the types of issues you're describing, and I routinely upload from LR mobile, even on hotel wifi networks.

It would help to understand the size of the DNG files you are uploading, and what exactly is the speed of your "not fast" connection? What kind of device are you using? How many synced photos do you have? Are you trying to sync photos taken with your phone, within LR Mobil, or from another camera app, or downloaded from an external camera?

Let's get some actionable data and we'll see if we can help you figure out what's going wrong in your case.

Mike

Participating Frequently
May 15, 2018

Hi Mike, well... by slow I mean about 0.75 Mbps! (that’s on wifi - yay Australia). But, if I switch to cellular data I get a 7-8 Mbps upload speed. But, even with that, there’s no change in upload speed. I tried restarting the app, pausing and unpausing the uploads... no dice. It’s always the same.

As for the dng size... 3mb or so. They’re from an iPhone 7 camera.

Michael J. Hoffman
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 16, 2018

Well, an iPhone 7 takes 20Mb DNGs, more or less. Which should be 5 minutes or so at your 0.75Mb/s speed. How many photos are in your upload queue? Maybe the fact that you’re in Australia and pushing the uploads across the pond has something to do with it. I’ll reach out to one of the Adobe staff to drop in here and have a look to see if there’s anything that can be done.

I find upload speeds vary from time to time, and sometimes it’s slower, but in general it’s pretty good for me. I tend to keep all my iPhone captures in a single album/collection, and i periodically empty that collection after all the photos have synced over to my desktop.

Mike