Today’s Question: I find that I sometimes accidentally click on the button to add an image to the Quick Collection when I’m just trying to click on a thumbnail to select an image. Is there any way to disable the button for the Quick Collection to avoid accidentally clicking on it?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can indeed disable the clickable badges that appear on thumbnails for photos in Lightroom Classic, but do keep in mind that you will miss out on some helpful utility in the process.
More Detail: First off, I should point out that the “Quick Collection” button that appears at the top-right of thumbnails in Lightroom Classic is actually the “Target Collection” button. By default, the target collection is indeed the Quick Collection, but you can right-click on any collection in the Collections list on the left panel in the Library module and choose “Set as Target Collection”. That will cause the letter “B” keyboard shortcut and the circular badge at the top-right of thumbnails to add an image to that target collection rather than the Quick Collection.
In addition to the target collection badge at the top-right of thumbnails there are other badges that indicate keywords have been assigned, an image is in a collection, the metadata includes GPS coordinates, the image has been cropped, and adjustments have been applied in the Develop module. These badges are also clickable, such as to click on the GPS badge to navigate automatically to the location where that photo was captured in the Map module. Disabling the badge for the target collection will disable all these badges.
If you want to disable the ability to click on these badges, you’ll need to change settings in two places, one for the filmstrip on the bottom panel and one for the grid view display.
For the filmstrip you’ll want to bring up the Preferences dialog by choosing Edit > Preferences from the menu on Windows or Lightroom Classic > Preferences on Macintosh. Go to the Interface tab, where you can either turn off the “Show badges” button to hide the badges altogether, or turn on the “Ignore clicks on badges” button if you want to disable the effect of clicking on a badge while keeping the badges visible. Both of these checkboxes are found in the Filmstrip section of the Interface tab in the Preferences dialog.
For the grid view display you’ll need to choose View > View Options from the menu and then go to the Grid View tab within the View Options dialog. If you only want to disable the badge for the target collection you can turn off the “Quick Collection Markers” checkbox in the Cell Icons section. If you want to hide all the badges you can turn off the “Thumbnail Badges” checkbox.
The badges do provide a useful reference for certain information about your photos, along with the utility of being able to click on those badges to access certain features. I personally like to keep the badges displayed and clickable, but obviously if you are finding that you often click on these badges accidentally there are options to avoid that issue.
