"Macintosh HD" is Read Only - MacOS Catalina 10.15

[HaydenMeade]

I've been having an issue when opening Lightroom CC. I have tried several solutions for over 2 hours and I've had no success.

Problem(s)

The first noticeable problem is on startup, Lightroom tells me that my hard drive is Read-Only and that I need to either change it's permissions or select a new storage location. So the first solution I tried was to select my external hard drive as the new destination to save files. At first I thought that it worked, the error message went away, I tried to import my photos to get to work and when get to the final import page, Lightroom gives me another error telling me 1 of either 2 things: A) The disk needs X amount of more storage to import, please free up space and try again or B) Error occurred when checking disk space.

When it gave me solution A, I did delete space and it gave me the exact same error message afterward. But that error shouldn't be happening either way. I have over 70gb of free space on my internal drive and 2TB on my External.

What I've tried to do

I have googled the cuss out of this issue. I've tried using Adobe's own script for terminal twice with no success. Solutions to Adobe Lightroom Lightroom user permission issues on launch - that didn't work. I thought maybe it could be a problem with my hard drive, so I ran disk utility and found corruption. I repaired my disk in recovery mode and thought everything was fixed. But still the problem kept happening. I found a youtube video Adobe Lightroom Classic User Permissions Issues-Fix-macOS - YouTube - that didn't work.

After that, I figured that it was more than likely a problem that's specific to the beta version of Catalina and that maybe I just needed to change Lightroom's permissions in my system preferences. So I gave Lightroom complete and total access to my files and folders. I thought for sure I had solved the problem and that the error message would go away. But it didn't. It's still here and I still can't edit or even import my photos.

Please help me, there have been a few other things that I've tried as well, like resetting Lightroom's preferences, but that hasn't worked either. If you have any solutions, I'd love to hear them. I think it might come down to me downgrading from Catalina but I'm hoping to avoid that. Thank you.

[JohanElzenga]

These are known issues, that no doubt will be fixed by the time MacOS 10.15 is officially released. Don’t use beta software if you need to do some real work.

[HaydenMeade]

Thanks for the help

[HaydenMeade]

Can you please link me to where this is a known issue? I was looking for a while and couldn’t find this specific issue with Catalina and Lightroom, but I’d really like to know what other people are trying to fix this issue.

[bdarke]

Same here, THanks Hayden.

[JohanElzenga]

Go to https://feedback.photoshop.com. That is the forum for reporting bugs and requesting new features (this is a user-to-user forum) and that is where this issue has already been reported some time ago.

Quite frankly, this is an ongoing issue however. Each year when Apple releases a public beta of the next MacOS, there are people rushing into it, install it onto their working machine, try to use Lightroom on it, and then come the forums to report problems. There is nothing wrong with trying beta software, but do use it on a machine that is not mission critical, so you can just play around with it without running any risks like corrupting your Lightroom catalog.

[HaydenMeade]

I’ve gone ahead and used recovery to reinstall Mojave as I think that’s the fastest solution as of right now. As far as I can tell, other people are having this issue now as well. No where in the adobe help page did it direct me to the webpage that you linked. My problem in on topic for this forum and if you don’t have a solution, please don’t respond to the question, thx m8.

edit: after your edit- yes thank you I understand that. I was hoping to not have to downgrade my OS in the beginning and that’s why I pointed it out in question. I asked the question because I was inconvenienced by this problem and I was hoping someone knew a fast solution. Other than "Don’t use beta software"

[JohanElzenga]

Yes, I understand why you asked it. But even if somebody did find a solution without downgrading, that solution might have been even worse. Why? Because it would have meant that you would continue to use beta OS software on an (apparently) working machine. Murphy’s Law dictates that it would only be a matter of time before you ran into the next problem (maybe Lightroom related again, maybe something completely different). And that problem might be so much worse that even downgrading would not have solved it...

I gave my answer as a kind of general warning, not to insult you or anything like that, but for anyone who would read it. It’s my opinion that companies should not release ‘public beta’ software. Beta testing is a job, and reporting bugs in such a way that the author can do something about it too. That’s not a job one should ask the public to do. Most people who install public betas are not experienced beta testers, do not even intend to do real beta testing, but simply can’t wait till the official release.

[HaydenMeade]

Please keep the forum clear for those who might find a solution to the problem that I was having.

[JohanElzenga]

They are free to post it here. I won’t stop them...

[BillAU]

Johan, how does your comment help Hayden or others in the same situation? It says you are a "professional". Doesn't seem like it.

[zaptrax]

I just installed MacOS 10.15 Catalina (not the beta) and permissions are a mess. I am unable to change permission because it says I am not authorized. I was also unable to find files that had been on the HD. Finally found them here: Users>Shared>Relocated Items>Security> Can't believe Apple would not solve these problem before releasing the software to the public.

[Faravahar]

Hi Johan! Unfortunately, with the released Catalina OSX the problem still exists, and LR catalogs cannot be opened! "Lightroom Catalogs can not be opened on network volumes, removable storage, or read only volumes"

[Faravahar]

The issue has not been resolved with the official 10.15 OSX release. This is ridiculous and very frustrating!

[artems74221965 · Accepted solution]

I've been able to bypass this issue by mounting OS volume as writable (which is read-only in Catalina) using "mount -uw /" command in Terminal. Works until restart, after that it will become read-only again and you have to remount it again.

[wilsonhomemac]

I needed "sudo mount -uw /". 

Just an FYI.  Works fine after that.  Thanks. 

[BillAU]

Thanks Wilson. This solved it.

Johan, this is how you answer a question. Or perhaps you actually don't know what you are talking about?

[abhitheindian]

Thanks Wilson, fixed my issue

[wilsonhomemac]

You're welcome.  Now....If I can only figure out how to get LR CC to save PS images back into the LR database.   This seems to be broken in Catalina as well.  If anyone has that one figured out...I'm all ears.  

[Arkian]

damn, I almost crazy for this, i've looking for many ways, but this, it's just simple as that, thanks man

[aaronkaiser]

I wasn’t able to get this to work with the terminal command, but I did find a workaround to add them through the Lightroom web app (https://lightroom.adobe.com) and then sync them back to my external drive through the cloud.

This seems a bit ridiculous as you have to upload and then download the files, but it’s the only way I was able to import my images. Obviously, if you don’t have a good internet connection, this might not be an ideal option for everyone.

[nathansmith]

Easy way is just to selec the disk, (Command-I on Mac), then go to the bottom and click on "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" (you may have to unlock the lock), and it should now be writeable with no issues. 

[lvangent]

Mr Apple has made changes to browing the file system by applications.

open your settings > security & Privacy.

Select tab privacy and scroll down the left list until you see "Full Disk Access"

Add your application to this and you won't have the read only problem again.

[Faravahar]

Thanks for the prompt. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in the released 10.15 OSX Catalina. Damn it, Apple and Adobe!

[pudepied]

This is very helpful.

It also solves the problem that arises in Lightroom Classic with Catalina 10.15.1 where attempts to move folders to a network volume fail with an error message like "Cannot create folder on ...". Just do exactly as lvangent suggests but instead of using "Full Disk Access" use the "File and Folder" entry to change the Network Drive access permissions for Lightroom CC.