I was recently editing photos in Adobe Lightroom when I came across an anachronism from another era. I ran across this issue after I tried deleting a photo in a collection that was set to sync with Lightroom mobile. My recent trial had expired, which meant syncing was stalled.

However, when I tried deleting a photo from my collection, I got an error box, followed by a jarring move of the mouse. It seems a person at Adobe thought the best way to draw attention to my sync status was to steal my arrow’s focus and move it to a different place.

Here is a video demonstrating the issue:

I haven’t seen an app do this in such a long time. Perhaps the Adobe Lightroom team needs to revisit the UX of Lightroom Mobile. They could have handled this in several ways including:

1. Rewritten copy on the error dialog box
2. Better UX revealing the sync state of Lightroom mobile
3. Highlighting the element on the navigation bar to draw the user’s attention

Perhaps someone else found this “notification” useful, but I found it off putting, especially when I keep getting the issue after every photo I delete from a synced collection.