When working with Lightroom Classic, it’s essential that it has proper access to files on disk. Otherwise, you might see weirdness, like plugins not working or external edits getting hung up. It can also slow down exporting or even cause files to misbehave.

Provide files and Full Disk Access

The key thing you need to do is provide Full Disk Access to Lightroom Classic on macOS. Just follow these steps. You will need administrator access to your machine (username and password too).

  1. Click the Apple menu and choose System Settings.
  2. Choose Privacy & Security.
  3. Choose Full Disk Access.
  4. Click the + (plus) icon at the bottom of the window.
  5. Navigate to the Applications folder on macOS and choose the Adobe Lightroom Classic application.
  6. Confirm permission. You might need to quit and relaunch the application.

Things should now work much better. This problem often raises its head whenever you run an OS upgrade (even a minor one). If plugins start to misbehave, give it a check. Now that Lightroom Classic has proper disk permissions on your Mac, the errors should clear up.