# Lightroom can not write...



## mullenphotoworks (Aug 13, 2016)

Hello,
I recently started using Lr Mobile and have several collections that do sync properly. All the same, whenever I launch Lr on my macbook pro I receive the following message: "Lightroom cannot write to the following directories. Until the problem is resolved, syncing from Lr Mobile may not function correctly.   /" (_this is the directory indicated in the dialog)._

When I show in Finder, Finder points to my Macbook hard drive. My Lr catalog does reside on the hard drive, while the actual image files reside on an external drive. 

As mentioned I have just started using mobile and have not performed any editing, nor have I added metadata in mobile. I am wondering if the language saying "syncing from Lr Mobile" is the key an issue. 

If so, is there a recommendation/solution to make sure things are working properly?


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## tspear (Aug 13, 2016)

Search on the form for Mac and permissions.
It sounds like the file/directory permissions are not correct and need to be fixed. I unfortunately do not know Lr well enough to tell you which directories need to be fixed.


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## Johan Elzenga (Aug 13, 2016)

When you add a photo made on your phone to LrM, that photo needs to be synched back to Lr desktop. The default setting is that it ends up in a special file, that is shown in Lr as a separate device (like another disk). It sounds like there may be a problem with that particular file. That would explain the warning, and also why synching from Lr desktop to LrM is unaffected. In the latest version of Lr, you can change the destination of the imported images to a normal folder. That should solve this.


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## Neil Hunt (Apr 10, 2017)

Thanks - solved for me too.

I had same problem, different folder named.

Confirming that fixing the location specified for pictures to be uploaded fixes the problem.
In my case, I moved a catalog from another computer, and the folder name /Users/Initials/list/of/folders did not exist.  In fact /Users/Initials did not exist.  It was reported incorrectly as "can't write to /Users" - a bug, I think - because there was full write permission to that folder.

However, as soon as I fixed to /Users/FullName/list/of/folders it uploads, and does not report this error any longer.


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## MartinHarvey (May 22, 2021)

Thank you so much for this. I had big issues with my iMac that took a lot of work with senior Apple support staff. In recreating and migrating the data the user name changed and it was in Preferences>Lightroom Sync that the previous user name resided. So a simple fix that was driving me nuts!


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