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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.
So you're saying that if I used Lightroom Classic, I could sync the collection between the iPad and the laptop?
By @billwatson82
No, not exactly. Neither Lightroom nor Lightroom Classic let you sync already imported images with an iPad across a local connection (network or USB). If images are already imported into Lightoom on iPad, both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic require the cloud for syncing the images already in the app.
I think I meant to say that because Lightroom Classic stores originals locally, it’s easier to use it when the Internet is either slow or not available. For example, parts of a catalog can be exported and imported across a local network with other desktops and laptops. But if images are already imported into Lightroom on iPad, syncing to a laptop is the same with Lightroom Classic: Adobe requires going through the cloud. I might have to edit what I wrote earlier.
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