Today’s Question: Whenever I import photos into Lightroom Classic, during the import the status at the top-left shows “2 operations in progress”. This used to only be the import, without a second task going on. Did I accidentally change something that I should be concerned about?
Tim’s Quick Answer: What you’re seeing is an indication that Lightroom Classic is now generating the previews you selected during the Import process concurrent with the actual import of your photos. This is an update from earlier versions of Lightroom Classic.
More Detail: Prior to a relatively recent update to Lightroom Classic, previews would be generated after the import process had finished completely. Now, previews are generated in parallel during the import process. That means two tasks (the import and the building of previews) are happening at the same time.
So, previously you would have seen a progress indicator at the top-left of the Lightroom interface showing the progress for the import task. Then, after the actual import was completed, that progress indicator would change to show you the progress for building previews for the images based on the option you selected in the Import dialog.
Now you will see two progress indicators at the same time. You can click on the popup for those progress indicators to see details of which tasks are being performed, and the percentage of completion for each of those tasks.