Handy tool for cleaning up your Lightroom Classic backups

Sunday 28 December 2025, 16:32 by Elja Trum | 4,722 views | 31 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Lightroom Classic regularly backs up your catalogue. Handy if something goes wrong. But Lightroom never cleans up those backups. You have to do that yourself, by hand, or with this handy tool!

I regularly forget to clean up those backups myself. Each backup made for my catalogue is now 3 gigabytes in size. So that soon adds up. That's why I have now created a free tool that automatically deletes the backups for me.

My Lightroom Classic Backup Cleaner is available for both Windows and Mac OS (Intel or Apple Silicon). You can set how many backups you want to keep. For example, the last five backups. You can also specify that no backups younger than, for example, 3 months may be deleted.

You can quickly delete the backups by starting the tool and clicking 'clean up'. But, even more conveniently, you can also set the app to check for older backups to delete every time your computer starts up. This keeps your computer tidy.

The tool is completely free to download and use, and is also open-source.

Download:
» Lightroom Classic Back-up Cleaner - Windows (x64)
» Lightroom Classic Back-up Cleaner - macOS (Intel)
» Lightroom Classic Back-up Cleaner - macOS (Apple Silicon)

Of course, I tested it extensively myself, except for the Apple Silicon version, as I don't have a suitable Apple computer at home. But if something goes wrong, let me know. Then I can look into it and update the app.

How many gigabytes can you free up?

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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31 comments

Erik Snoeij wrote on Sunday 28 December 2025 at 20:38 | reply
Great, this tool! Used it right away and created a shortcut on the desktop.
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Sjoerd van der Wal wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 09:38 | reply
Just tested it on an Apple Silicon Mac and it works perfectly. Thanks!
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Elja Trum wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 10:16 | reply
Thanks, good to hear that this is going well too.
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Pieter wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 10:22 | reply
Great and very handy, wiped 2o gb clean off my Mac . Is it also advisable to delete the Old backup. It says so, but just to be sure, asking anyway. This could save another 3.5 Gb.
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Elja Trum wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 11:24 | reply
Yes, that old backup is your catalog from before Lightroom did a major update and upgraded your catalog as well. Lightroom creates that backup in case something goes wrong during the update.

If you've already been using your Lightroom Classic for months with the new version and everything works fine, then that old version can simply be deleted.
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Harry Wolf wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 11:35 | reply
I'm not very handy with this sort of thing. I downloaded the Windows version and put the zip file in the Program Files folder with the other Lightroom files before opening it. When opening it, I get a warning that an unknown app is trying to do something with my PC. Unfortunately, with that message I don't get the option to run or not run it and can only click don't run.
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Elja Trum wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 13:33 | reply
You do need to extract the program from the .ZIP first. If you open the zip (by double-clicking it), you can then drag the program to another folder (or your desktop).

In principle, it shouldn't matter where you put it. You should be able to open it by double-clicking the program. In your case, you may be able to run it by right-clicking it and choosing 'run as administrator'.
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Jo Verdoodt wrote on Tuesday 21 April 2026 at 20:00 | reply
Windows 11 doesn't want me to install the program. Not even as administrator.
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Louis wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 13:13 | reply
great tool ! big thanks
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Adri FRIJTERS wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 15:23 | reply
Too bad that the virus scanner is triggered and actually doesn't want you to use the tool.
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info@wimwilmers.nl wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 16:42 | reply
my pc also indicates that it is a suspicious tool unfortunately
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Elja Trum wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 17:34 | reply
A computer will quickly do that when it has been downloaded from the internet. So that doesn't say very much, but it is indeed wise to be careful.

In this case I can tell you that it is safe to install. But then you'll have to take my word for it.

The source code is freely available, so if you know a bit about it you can check it yourself.
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Harry Wolf wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 17:17 | reply
Thank you, it worked. Now I just need to see how much I want to throw away.
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Rita Bruynooghe wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 17:26 | reply
Great! Managed to free up 40 G
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Michaël wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 18:09 | reply
Super useful. Can free up a lot of GBs. Thanks!!
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arnold elfring wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 21:33 | reply
I managed to do it too and it works fine thanks
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arnold elfring wrote on Tuesday 30 December 2025 at 21:36 | reply
works great
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guest wrote on Wednesday 31 December 2025 at 00:12 | reply
Often you first need to click 'More Information' (or words to that effect), then you get an option 'Run Anyway'.
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guest wrote on Wednesday 31 December 2025 at 00:21 | reply
Great tool! Works well. Still, one comment: for the 'Automatically Clean Up Daily' option (if enabled), it would be useful if the tool automatically hid itself in the 'System Tray' and kept running when you close the Window. That is not the case now, at least for me.
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Elja Trum wrote on Wednesday 31 December 2025 at 08:32 | reply
When choosing daily at a fixed time, a Windows Task is created. It should start the app at that time (if the PC is on) and perform the cleanup.
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Peter Van den Broek wrote on Wednesday 31 December 2025 at 08:53 | reply
Hello Elja,
sounds great.
Only...how do I know which Mac OS I have: Intel or Apple Silicon?
I just have MacOS Sequoia listed.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Peter
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Elja Trum wrote on Wednesday 31 December 2025 at 09:54 | reply
Intel are its older Macs. Apple Silicon are the Macs with an M1, M2, M3, etc processor. Basically everything you bought in the past five years will be Apple Silicon.
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Pierre Pinkse wrote on Thursday 1 January 2026 at 13:47 | reply
It's a shame the program doesn't work for me. Windows version. Installation works. But when I want to clean up, everything freezes. I can't tick the settings either. Back to doing it manually then. Shame. Apparently it works for others.
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Elja Trum wrote on Thursday 1 January 2026 at 14:43 | reply
That's strange. Can you email me some screenshots or a short video. Maybe I can see what's going wrong.
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guest wrote on Friday 2 January 2026 at 16:38 | reply
Thank you!
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Edward wrote on Wednesday 14 January 2026 at 06:43 | reply
I have been running the program for quite a number of days and it does work in itself. However, every morning it crashes on a Mac PC. So then I have to restart it and it works fine.
I can send Elja the crash info if necessary. I work on a powerful Mac Studio with the latest version of the operating system.
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Elja Trum wrote on Wednesday 14 January 2026 at 08:56 | reply
Yes, please send the crash info by email, then I'll see what I can improve.
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Edward wrote on Sunday 25 January 2026 at 10:30 | reply
The program keeps crashing. I sent you the code 2 weeks ago already, Elja. Just had to remove the program from my Mac, unfortunately, but getting a crash report every day :(
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Elja Trum wrote on Sunday 25 January 2026 at 15:37 | reply
I have received it, I expect to release an update soon.
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Elja Trum wrote on Tuesday 27 January 2026 at 09:48 | reply
The new update is out. If it still crashes, I would appreciate receiving the crash logs. They are now explicitly saved in ~/Library/Application Support/LightroomBackupCleaner/
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pedrobis wrote on Wednesday 29 April 2026 at 12:46 | reply
Hello Elja, nice tool. I installed it in WIN11 but now I’m wondering where this application is located. I can’t find it among the installed apps. Still annoying when you want to open the application to make an adjustment in the settings.
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Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about Photofacts

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