A lot of users have been experiencing issues tethering to Lightroom with both Canon and Nikon once they upgrade to the Catalina OS.  I have been troubleshooting this off and on for 5 months.  Basically, you launch Lightroom and launch tethered capture and Lightroom can’t “see” the camera.  This is what it looks like, but what is really happening is Lightroom can’t see portions of your file structure.

Why have I tolerated this problem so long?  Well honestly it is because I usually tether with Capture One, but as a teaching assistant, I need to be able to do both to show students how to do it.  Today I finally cracked the code.  The problem is a Privacy and Security setting in Apple preferences.

Two of the above tabs, for some reason when you go to Catalina, aren’t checked.  Give Lightroom access to all of these folders and wha-laa, Problem fixed.

I have asked Adobe to add this to the list of troubleshooting steps on their online guide below.

Adobe’s Tethering Trouble Shooting Guide

I hope this helps some people out there struggling with the same issue.