Today’s Question: Sometimes while working in Lightroom Classic I’ll accidentally click on a collection or folder, and then I have to go searching for the folder I was trying to browse. Is there a way to “undo” that selection to go back to the folder that had previously been selected?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can use the “Go Back” button to navigate to previously browsed folders or collections in Lightroom Classic.
More Detail: Among the lesser-known features of Lightroom Classic are the “Go Back” and “Go Forward” buttons. These are found toward the top-left of the bottom panel in the Library module, and enable you to navigate backward or forward through the history of folders and collections you’ve browsed. The buttons have icons with a left-pointing arrow and a right-pointing arrow, respectively.
For example, if you’re browsing photos in a folder and then accidentally click on a collection, you don’t need to scroll back up and locate the folder you had been browsing. You can simply click the “Go Back” button on the bottom panel.
In other words, the “Go Back” and “Go Forward” buttons behave very much like the Back and Forward buttons common in web browsers. So, let’s assume you start a session in Lightroom Classic browsing a folder containing photos from Italy. Then you navigate to a folder of images from Iceland. You then click on a collection featuring photos you intend to use in a calendar. If you click the “Go Back” button you’ll be taken back to the Iceland folder. Clicking the “Go Back” button again will take you to the Italy folder. If you click “Go Forward” at that point you’ll be back to the Iceland folder, and clicking it again will take you to the collection for the calendar.
While in many cases you could simply click on the folder or collection you want to navigate to, the “Go Back” and “Go Forward” buttons do provide a convenient shortcut for navigating among sources of images you’ve been reviewing. And those buttons can be particularly helpful when you’ve clicked on a folder or collection accidentally and want an easy way to get back to the images you had been browsing previously.
