Sync from iPad direct to laptop

If you mean you have a lot of photos imported into or taken using Lightroom for iPad, and you want to sync them with Lightroom (not Lightroom Classic) for macOS or Windows, I do not think Lightroom provides any way to do it locally. It’s designed to sync through the cloud only. And to do that quickly requires fast upload speed, not just fast download.

If the photos on the iPad were not in Lightroom (for example, just in the Files app), and the laptop was running Lightroom Classic (not Lightroom) for macOS for Windows, then you could connect the iPad to the laptop with a cable and import them into Lightroom Classic without going through the cloud. But because this question was posted in the Lightroom (not Lightroom Classic) forum, the assumption is you have cloud-based Lightroom on both the iPad and laptop, and so the answer is no, there is no local sync option at this time.

Sameer’s suggestion of browsing an iPad from the Mac Finder desktop is one way to transfer files from an iPad to a Mac, but it is an older method that is not ideal for the current version of iOS, and Lightroom does not fully support it. When I tried this method, it can’t be used to browse the Files app or the contents of Lightroom on iPad. Although you can expand the Lightroom listing, it doesn’t let you expand the folders. You must drag the strangely named folder (see picture) to your computer, browse the copy on the computer, manually dig into the Originals folder to get the files you want, and delete the rest of the copied folder.

What has been much easier for me is, with images stored in the Files app (outside of Lightroom), enable SMB file sharing on the laptop, then in the Files app on the iPad, tap the (…) button at the top, tap Connect to Server (here are the Connect to Server instructions from Apple), and sign into the laptop. That lets you use the iPad Files app to browse folders on the laptop. Use the Files app to transfer the files from the iPad Files app to that folder on the laptop. For example, open a Files app window for the iPad folder with images, use Split View to open another Files app window to pick a folder on the laptop, and drag/drop or copy/paste the files from the iPad to the laptop. If both devices are on the same local network, then it will be a local transfer with no Internet involved.

Keep in mind that none of these suggestions actually syncs Lightroom over a local connection. They are ways of manually working around Lightroom, transferring the files outside of Lightroom and then importing them into Lightroom on the laptop side.

Welcome to the Lightroom Community. I'll help you figure this out. Lightroom iPad syncs the full-size raw images to the cloud & the synced image will appear on the Lightroom desktop via the cloud.

If you still have the full-size raw images stored on the iPad apart from Lightroom's storage, you can try the manual copying & pasting of the images from the iPad's local storage to your desktop computer. Check this if you're using a Mac machine: https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210598

Let me know if this helps. Thanks!

Sameer K