I find that tree navigation is difficult in a few ways, all caused by the same thing: the fact that clicking any folder results in the list and data being generated.

I often click folders while exploring - sometimes intentionally, other times by mistake. Regardless, I feel this is a normal way to interact with a file tree, even if I'm not clicking folders that have timelapses in them, but this causes the following issues:

1. My system slows down while the image and data list is created, even if I don't care about this data.

2. Clicking away from the folder then pops up the Unsaved Changes dialog (even though I did not intend for any metadata to be created there).

3. A .lrt folder is created in the folder, even though I did not intend for any metadata to be created there (and said "no" to saving changes). My system now has a lot of .lrt folders in locations that don't have timelapses.

Could there be an extra step before Keyframes Wizard such as 'Initiate Timelapse Data' that populates the list and creates the .lrt folder?
If this creates an annoying workflow for those who have faster systems and only deal with timelapse folders, this could be an auto-toggle like Visual Previews is.

Auto initialization has been part of LRTimelapse for a long time now and normally it really makes sense to do that initialization while loading, otherwise it would be an additional step and take way more time.

I agree that we could discuss if an .lrt folder should be generated, if you just switch away from the folder without saving. That's something I'll consider removing for one of the next versions.

In LRTimelapse 6 however, there is way less need to click on folders that you don't really want to load, because you have the nice preview when hovering over the folder tree. This is the way to go, if you just want to locate folders.

Let's see, what others think about these points.

Update: in the next update the .lrt helper folder will be removed if the user opens a folder for the first time and decides not to save. In that case LRTimelapse then won't leave a trace anymore in such folders. This will be implemented in 6.0.2.

This has been implemented in 6.0.2 now: https://lrtimelapse.com/download/