Participant

Question

Really large Lightroom library.lrlibrary

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
June 29, 2020
5 replies
22284 views

Hi,

My lightroom lrlibrary file has grown to be really huge. It is at 122 GB right now and a separate file, "Photos Library" is 27 GB in size.

Any ideas what to do? This is really eating up the space on my laptop.

System details: macOS Catalina 10.15

Thanks, in advance, for your help.

This topic has been closed for replies.

R

Rylee38721512rjjl

Participant

I only have 5 BG of free disk space usage on my Mac. I only have 800 photos in my Lightroom and no photos in the trash. When I went to manage my storage I found that a folder called Lightroom.lrlibrary is taking up all the storage. Will it delete my album in my lightroom app if I delete this folder? It doesn't open any photos when I click on it...

HELP

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

This is a very old thread. Best to create a new one instead as this might not be related to what's in the old! Quick answer is that if you go into Lightroom and if you click on the cloud icon (right top of window) and it says that you are fully synced and backed up, you can just delete the Lightroom.lrlibrary file. The next time you start Lightroom, it will get recreated from the cloud.

L

lydias74186319

Participant

Hello

I've googled this heaps and can't find my answer.

When looking at my Macs storage, it says I've got 79.54gb of lightroom files. I have no projects underway, so these are not actual images. Which suggests they're backups or previews - but I can't figure out what I can and cannot delete.

However the actual lightroom files don't appear to be larger than 720.3mb. Where is this 79gb and can I delete it? Hopefully the attached image helps. Thank you!

AxelMatt

Community Expert

Please see here:

Really large Lightroom library.lrlibrary - Adobe Support Community - 11249666

Gelöst: Giant Lightroom library.lrlibrary file - Adobe Support Community - 12761719

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 5 - Topaz Photo

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

Both of the linked posts contain out of date screenshots, etc. Best place to look for up to date guidance on local storage and how to configure same to avoid using space unnecessarily is at https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/using/preferences.html#Localstoragepreferences

R

Rafael26537037qnnb

Participant

Hey there!

I'm unfortunately having the same issue. I tried to follow your instructions however I havent been able to locate Preferences->local storage. For context, I use lightroom classic.

When I click in to prefrence, the only option that I get that is related to "cache size" is under a setting called "camera raw cache settings". In this section there appears to be a maximum size option that is represented in GB not a percentage. Additionally, the GB cant be changed to an option lower than 5 GB.

Ask: Am I in the right place and if not, could you please show me how to get there?

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

Hey there!

I'm unfortunately having the same issue.

No, you're not having the same issue....this thread was referring to the amount of space taken up by the local library created by the Lightroom cloud-based app, which is nothing to do with Lightroom Classic.

It would be much better if you started a new thread in the Lightroom Classic forum, and which clearly explains what problem you need help with.

A

A.MAG1959

Participant

Hello ,

I have the same problem , big lrlibrary file and same System details

but can't find the preferences ---> local storage .... where ?

I've searched in Lightroom Preferences , Photo Preferences and also MAc System Preferences ... did not find

Thanks in advance for your help

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

From the Lightroom menu select preferences and then click on Local storage. There you can select how much space the Lightroom Library can take up. Make sure to uncheck the two "store a copy" options

A

A.MAG1959

Participant

Thanks , perfect !!

I understood and the problem with lrlibrary is solved now, but

I still have a hudge file Mobile Downloads.Irdata 124.02 GB

Can you help me to reduce it too ?

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

Photos Library is your library for the Photos app and has nothing to do with Lightroom so don't touch that. The Lightroom.lrlibrary file is controlled by the setting in Preferences->local storage. You should see a preference for photo cache size there and preferences to store smart previews and whether to store local copies for everything. Set the photo cache size to a smaller number and after a few days you should see the lrlibrary file decrease. Also you can generally turn off the local copy option.

S

sib7nAuthor

Participant

Thanks! That's very useful.

I had my options set to 25% of the available disk space (now reduced it to 10%) and had the "local copy option" set to off already. Hopefully the reduction (25% to 10%) will help.

Also, can I delete the current files in the local copy (in the "originals" folder) safely?

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

If you click on the cloud icon in Lightroom and it says "Synced and Backed up" you can delete files from the orginals folder inside the lrlibrary file indeed. But make absolutely sure Lightroom says everything is synced and backed up.

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