Q: Photostream not updating on Mac Photos

HI,

Maybe try it this way this is what I did with mine because I did not migrate and didn't know about that either.

and really have the sidebar so because it will help you get the pictures organized

Photos application for Mac Instructions that might help!

1. On your iPad,iPhone keep the iCloud on in settings for Photos.
2. if you have not opened the New Photos application yet to have it transfer your photos from iPhoto let it Transfer the Pictures.
3. once you have all the pictures from iPhoto to Photos then in Photos go to Preferences
4. there is general and iCloud tab and go to the iCloud and only uncheck the iCloud button that will make it so it doesn't sync with your iPhone and iPad for Photos.
5. Then in Photos go up to View and press show sidebar because with that view you can move your pictures easier to albums snd delete or move any pictures or make new albums
6. For Duplicates if you have a big pile in a row and I mean not like every other picture of the same pictures on the keyboard Hold down the shift button. or the other way is to Hold down the Command buttom that is right by the space bar then on the trackpad or mouse click once on the picture you want to delete and do a bunch at a time then on the last picture of that pile either right click the picture and delete or go up to the edit button which is next to file on the top left and click delete in edit. 
7. when you are all done with moving around your pictures or whatever go back to Preferences and turn on iCloud and make sure you have the optimize Mac Storage and then you are done! I hope this makes sense and works for you! here are the 2 pictures I'm talking about in settings.

Two things.

1. did you pick one of those libraries as your system library in the General settings?  Only one library can be the system library and only that one will download photos from iCloud.

2. Did you choose the iCloud setting to use My photo stream?

Your welcome

Mine isn't syncing immediately like i've seen on some demo videos online.  There's an obvious issue.  Moral of the story is never use stuff that has just come out.

Same problem here. 10.10.3, I had to reboot my Mac to get Photos to start downloading my photo stream. Ugh. I used to have to reboot Windows boxes all the time to get them to work, the past few years I ma rebooting my Macs to get them to work reliability and my Windows systems are rock solid.

I had this same issue.  I fixed this by:

Closing Photos.

Opening Activity Monitor.

Killing the process titled "Photos Agent"

I opened up Photos again, and my Photo Stream immediately updated. 

Ironic, isn't it.  Steve is not around anymore...

What a star, jmush1!  I've been struggling with getting my latest photos taken on my iPhone from Photostream onto my MacBook Air for the last 24 hours.  They just didn't seem to download.  Most of them had appeared on my iMac, but not all of them.  I tried all the usual things - quit Photos, restarted Photos, etc and no effect.  I tried your technique, and all the pictures have just come through.  Many thanks for sharing your fix.  I'll now try to get the rest of them on my iMac using the same fix.

Tried this, but didn't work for me. It's weird because I see photos in my photo stream taken on my iPhone a few days ago, showing up in my Mac. But not photos I took today, despite restarting Photos and killing the Photos Agent. Is there a manual refresh I don't know about? The photos are in the photo stream on my phone.

One photo I had to resort to emailing myself, but this is supposed to be so magically automatic. I can't think it is my settings since I see photos from a couple of days ago.

I missed the time with Aperture.

Anyway I migrated all photos and too late now but I had same issue but I found leaves photo app long time sometimes it updated..  Very intermittent.

Now what I do to update is go to Photos/Preferences/iCloud

Uncheck my photo stream and wait for 5seconds then recheck the box and instantly photos will come through and date will be updated.

I worried if photos all disappears but i tried this 100 times but it looks keep all the photos.

See if it helps.

Regards,

Brendon

I fixed this by doing this:

$ pkill -9 photo

$ pkill -9 com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration

which was a big hammer but seems to work.

Mike