Removing the Wrong Lightroom

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Today’s Question: When I opened Lightroom Classic CC, a notice opened that an update was available. When I updated it, I mistakenly clicked on Lightroom CC [rather than Lightroom Classic CC]. Now I have both versions of Lightroom on my computer. Can I safely delete Lightroom CC from my Windows desktop?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can absolutely uninstall Lightroom CC without impacting any of your work in Lightroom Classic CC. As long as you have not imported photos directly into Lightroom CC, uninstalling it won’t have any impact on your existing workflow.

More Detail: The names of Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC are obviously quite similar, and Lightroom Classic CC used to be called Lightroom CC. So it is understandable that you might get confused about which Lightroom is which, such as when installing updates to applications in the Adobe Creative Cloud.

The Lightroom Classic CC catalog is completely separate from the Lightroom CC catalog. The only real connection between the two relates to images that are synchronized via the Adobe Creative Cloud. In the case of Lightroom Classic CC, that means only photos in collections that have synchronization enabled. For Lightroom CC, all photos are synchronized to Creative Cloud.

If you inadvertently install Lightroom CC, but have never used it to import new photos, you can most certainly uninstall the application without harming your Lightroom Classic CC workflow or catalog.

I recommend using the Adobe Creative Cloud application to uninstall any applications you don’t need. Within the Creative Cloud app you can go to the Apps tab and locate the entry for Lightroom CC. To the right of Lightroom CC on this list, click the popup on the right side of the button that says “Open” (or “Update” if you haven’t yet installed the latest version). From the popup menu choose “Manage” followed by Uninstall to initiate the process of removing the application. You’ll be asked whether you want to keep preferences. Assuming you’ve not been using Lightroom CC and don’t intend to use it in the future, I recommend choosing the option to remove the preferences.