# Moving Lightroom: What to do with "mobile downloads.lrdata"



## tom_11 (Feb 11, 2021)

I have moved Lightroom Calssic from my mac to Windows PC.  Found many thousands of photos are missing all with original locations in Mobile Downloads.lrdata

I have found said Mobile Downloads.lrdata on my mac but where do I now put it on my PC? and why did not one tutorial mention I had to move this folder?


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## Paul McFarlane (Feb 11, 2021)

Place on your PC is:                 

Windows—C: \ Users \ [your username] \ My Pictures \ Lightroom \ Mobile Downloads. lrdata

Not sure which tutorials you checked, our free eBook on Moving computers specifies backing it up and restoring (complete with the paths)


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## tom_11 (Feb 11, 2021)

Thank you. Going through your ebook now with a fine tooth comb. Appreciate the hard work making it!


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## Paul McFarlane (Feb 11, 2021)

Pleasure! Check pages 4 & 12 for the mobile photos parts (but the other details on presets etc are handy and often overlooked)


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## Califdan (Feb 12, 2021)

Is anyone else concerned about the LR catalog pointing to "Mobile Downloads.lrdata" as the source for images in the catalog?  

In a prior post in the Adobe Support Community forum, Johan says: "The ‘mobile downloads.lrdata’ file is the destination for images that are in the cloud, but not yet in Lightroom Classic for some reason. This includes photos you took in Lightroom Mobile, but also images you added to the cloud in any other way. "  (Mobile Downloads.lrdata file keeps filling up my hd)

This follows my understanding that it is only a temporary holding bin until such time as LR/Classic brings in the images at which time the image file is placed in a normal folder (either the default one or one you designated for mobile downloads).    However, the OP indicates that "thousands of images" point to "mobile downloads.lrdata" as the source folder.  This troubles me but would like to hear from others.


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## clee01l (Feb 12, 2021)

Califdan said:


> This follows my understanding that it is only a temporary holding bin until such time as LR/Classic brings in the images at which time the image file is placed in a normal folder (either the default one or one you designated for mobile downloads). However, the OP indicates that "thousands of images" point to "mobile downloads.lrdata" as the source folder. This troubles me but would like to hear from others.


My memory is thus: The folder “mobile downloads.lrdata" was originally the destination folder for all images downloaded from the cloud going all the way back to LRCC 6. At some point Adobe changed the fixed destination to one that could be defined in preferences. The fixed destination was set as the default. Now you can designate any folder to be the download target and Lightroom Classic can automatically create a date named folder scheme for all cloud imports. All of my imports to Classic are to automatically created date named folders. Long in the past, I changed the default mobile data down loads to these date named folders. I do not have a “mobile downloads.lrdata" folder any more. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## tom_11 (Feb 12, 2021)

Yes I can confirm that basically all my Android & Ipad lightroom imports and autoimports all seem to have amassed 23Gb into the Mobile Downloads.lrdata

Preferences>lightroomSync>set destination has worked nicely 

It asked me if I wanted to move my images. Took about 3 hours 'moving' my images to my new folder inside my proper external drive and I can confirm that in my new LightroomSynch folder there are literally thousands of images now but it never actually moved all my folders inside of Mobile Downloads.lrdata so I have now also manually moved those folders into my lightroomSynch folder

Still mystifies me how I've lost 44 photos overall in my catalogue for no  real reason (find missing photos) 

Slowly getting there on this Lightroom Mac to Windows project. Wow though I can confirm Lightroom seems to perform far better in Windows!


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## Jim Wilde (Feb 12, 2021)

Califdan said:


> This follows my understanding that it is only a temporary holding bin until such time as LR/Classic brings in the images at which time the image file is placed in a normal folder (either the default one or one you designated for mobile downloads).    However, the OP indicates that "thousands of images" point to "mobile downloads.lrdata" as the source folder.  This troubles me but would like to hear from others.


Cletus is correct. Mobile Downloads.lrdata was, and I'm pretty sure it still is, the default location for all images synced from the cloud into LrClassic. Yes, the option exists to change to a different location, and there's a further option to additionally use one of LrC's standard date-based folder schemes, but if the user doesn't know (or care) about those options the synced images will accumulate in that default Mobile Downloads.lrdata package/folder.


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## swruddy (May 31, 2021)

Jim Wilde said:


> Cletus is correct. Mobile Downloads.lrdata was, and I'm pretty sure it still is, the default location for all images synced from the cloud into LrClassic. Yes, the option exists to change to a different location, and there's a further option to additionally use one of LrC's standard date-based folder schemes, but if the user doesn't know (or care) about those options the synced images will accumulate in that default Mobile Downloads.lrdata package/folder.


if I have not backed this up I can download it again once on the new system? (I have it but...)
I am trying to clean up a lot of stuff in this move.  I seem to over time have gotten multiple versions of say my iphone into the list in lightroom classic.  Somehow it switches between where they will show up on the computer randomly.  So I am hoping that I will have it down to just one version on a new install.
incidentally I am doing the opposite of OP and moving from an old windows computer to a new m1 mini.


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## swruddy (Jun 3, 2021)

swruddy said:


> if I have not backed this up I can download it again once on the new system? (I have it but...)
> I am trying to clean up a lot of stuff in this move.  I seem to over time have gotten multiple versions of say my iphone into the list in lightroom classic.  Somehow it switches between where they will show up on the computer randomly.  So I am hoping that I will have it down to just one version on a new install.
> incidentally I am doing the opposite of OP and moving from an old windows computer to a new m1 mini.


So I left Mobile Downloads.lrdata out on the mac.  This ended up with a whole bunch of ? marks on folders with long strings of random looking letters.
I can see those same dirs on my old  pc if I go to the C:\.... mobile downloads .lrdata. In LRC on the pc the dirs apear as tehh names of variouse piphones and Ipads I have had over the years. 
I tried to put the lrdata into the mac in the same location but no joy firing up lrc.  I tried to add the dirs from the find missing folder also no joy.  Seems on the mac I can not access the inside of the .lrdata folder.  Mac OSjust sees it as a file.
So yes I should have fixed this before the move.  I get that now . I have made some attempts at fixing it before but it always seemed like a wast of time...
I guess go back to the PC and pull out each dir and then relink them on the mac.  I would probably just get myself more screwed up if I tried to export them all as a catalog an re import on the mac.
Also there is lr sync.lrdata which seems somehow related to these as some of the files are from some of the same devices.  At some point I set the lr sync to go to a directory on my raid.  It seems to have copies of the files in the .lrdata as well as the directory on the PC raid.  When I set the location I asked for it to be by data taken but that folder structure was never created by lightroom. so there are a few thousand images just in one dir.

Sorry to blither on but I thought it might be of use to someone.
I am curious as to WTF actually did I or Adobe do to wreak such havoc.

TLDR
Did mobile downloads.lrdata become sync.lrdata at some point?  

Also does anyone know how to open .lrdata files as folders in the Mac finder?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 3, 2021)

swruddy said:


> Also does anyone know how to open .lrdata files as folders in the Mac finder?


Right-click on it and choose 'Show Package Content'.


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## swruddy (Jun 3, 2021)

Johan Elzenga said:


> Right-click on it and choose 'Show Package Content'.


thanks that works.


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