Hi @Sameer K !
I'm replying to your message here instead of starting a new post in the community.
I'm experiencing the same synchronization issue that another user recently described.
I typically work on my iPad for all photo editing — I don’t use my phone or MacBook for edits, as the screen sizes are either too small or too large for my workflow. The iPad and Apple Pencil are just the perfect combination for editing.
At some point, however, synchronization stopped working. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it started failing, since I was on a trip from March 20th to March 31st. During that time, I was regularly uploading around 800+ photos each evening to Lightroom, but I wasn’t editing them — just importing them. It’s important to note that the total number of photos (and even deleted files) remains identical across all platforms even now — iPad, laptop, mobile, and Lightroom Web.
I took a short break after my trip and began editing again on April 3rd — working on photos I had imported back in 2023 and 2024. The ones from the March trip will have to wait, as I prefer to go through all 6,000 of them first, selecting the best ones before starting the editing process.
I didn’t realize synchronization was broken until April 9th. Between April 3rd and April 9th, I edited roughly 800–1,000 photos — about 30 hours of work — and all of these edits are only visible on my iPad. None of them show up on my phone or Mac.
Interestingly, when I add or delete photos or albums on the iPad, those actions sync instantly across all devices. But any edits — even a minor 0.1 exposure adjustment — only appear on the iPad. On the other hand, if I make edits on my phone or laptop, those are instantly mirrored on the iPad. This leads me to believe the iPad is the source of the sync issue — but specifically and only when it comes to edits.
I’ve already reached out to seven support agents via live chat, but unfortunately, no one has been able to resolve the issue. I'm assuming you can access those chat transcripts and see the steps we’ve tried so far. I’ve followed all the suggestions except for reinstalling the app on the iPad. I did reinstalled the Lightroom app on my laptop and my mobile phone, but it didn't trigger the sync.
As part of troubleshooting, I tried editing random photos from different months and years across all devices. The results are consistent: edits made on mobile or desktop sync to the iPad, but edits made on the iPad do not sync to any other device. The sync icon on the iPad spins from time to time, so it seems like it’s uploading to the cloud — but the changes just never show up elsewhere.
I even left the iPad on overnight, as one agent suggested allowing a few hours for sync to start. Still nothing.
I’m hesitant to reinstall the app on the iPad, as I know I’ll lose all the edits and will have to redo about 30 hours of work. I’m also nervous about exporting the edited files, reinstalling the app, and uploading them again — especially since I’ve noticed that uploading images via Google Drive or computer can change the original “date taken” metadata. Keeping the original dates intact is extremely important to me, so I don’t want to risk losing that information.
At this point, I honestly don’t know what else to do. I’m reluctantly starting to accept the possibility that I may have to redo everything and fall behind on my personal schedule. But I’m still holding onto hope that maybe there’s something you can do — perhaps a manual sync trigger you can initiate from your side for my iPad, or maybe there’s an upcoming app update that will fix this and allow things to magically sync again.
Any help or insight would be deeply appreciated.
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