How to Reset Lightroom Classic’s Preferences (spoiler alert: the reset button is hidden)
If your Lightroom Classic starts acting up (hey, it happens), the first thing I usually try is to quit Lightroom and restart it (same fix as your phone, right?). If that doesn’t work, Plan B is to reset Lightroom’s preference back to their factory fresh defaults. This doesn’t delete your presets or custom brushes, but asking for a new set of preferences will usually fix what just restarting doesn’t. However, as you know (from the headline), this button is hidden. Here’s how to uncover it.
Above: Here’s Lightroom’s Preferences ‘General’ tab. Note the lonely ‘Reset all warnings dialog’ at the bottom center.
If you hold the Option key (PC: Alt-key), you’ll notice that some new buttons appear, and now the center button reads “Reset all preferences and relaunch.” That’s the one you click to have Lightroom quit, install a fresh set of preferences, and relaunch.
Hope you found that helpful. Have a great Monday, ya’ll (I’m out at Adobe HQ for some meeting this week), but more to come from Rob on Wed, and I’ll be back here on Friday.
-Scott
If for some reason, you are unable to launch Lightroom Classic to access the Preferences dialog, there is a KBSC reset on launch that you can use.
This procedure works for both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop.
Note: If you are using Lightroom Desktop, it can change your local storage location. Please review this setting after resetting preferences.
Reset Procedure:
1. Close Lightroom.
2. Hold down [Alt/Opt]+[Shift] while restarting Lightroom.
3. Overwrite the Preferences when prompted by the dialog.
4. Close Lightroom.
5. Restart Lightroom.
Hi, Rick – wow – I did not know that (and I’m going to make your comment the next post on here. That is really good (and hidden) stuff! Thank you!! 🙂
Amen on the reset fix. I went for weeks ranting at LrC and finally ask the forum. Ron suggested a reset and WALAH it worked and I became human again. Everyone should know this not very well known fix. Dale
Right? It’s amazing how often it can bring back order to your Lightroom world. 🙂
Didn’t know that one, thanks Scott!
You bet, Matt 🙂