G.Lenn

Q: Photos for Mac, stuck on "updating" trying to upload to iCloud Photos Library

Hardware

  • Late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina
  • 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5
  • 8GB RAM
  • Intel Iris Graphics

 

Software

  • Yosemite 10.10.3
  • Photos (latest release that is on Mac Appstore as of 2015-04-10)

 

Problem

Uploading status of Photos to iCloud Photo Library seems to be stuck at "Updating".  No change of progress bar despite hooking up my Mac through wired ethernet for 24 hours.

 

I've tried turning off Photos in iCloud settings and then turning them back on.  Restting, shutting down, all that stuff.  No photos are populating on my iCloud Photo Library from my Mac as far as I can tell.  Not even 1.

 

My Upgrade Process

  • Downloaded Photos Update
  • OPTION + CMD opened Photos app
  • Selected my iPhoto Library on an external USB 3.0 drive
  • Photos started converting the library

 

Photos library finished converting

  • I then tried to enable iCloud Photos Library, but it advised that only the System Photos Library can be used with iCloud.
  • I then changed my System Photos Library to the one on my harddrive.
  • I now am able to successfully enable iCloud Photos Library on the Photos App.

 

Again the problem I am having is that the uploading status seems to be forever stuck at "Updating" in the Photos App.

Anyone with similar problems?  Anyone found a fix / work around?

 

 

Supporting Screenshots

 

iCloud Settings in Photos App

Screen Shot 2015-04-10 at 11.13.19 AM.png

iCloud Settings in System Preferences

Screen Shot 2015-04-10 at 11.31.30 AM.pngScreen Shot 2015-04-10 at 11.32.01 AM.png

 

System Prefs > iCloud > Options Pane

Posted on Apr 10, 2015 8:39 AM

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Q: Photos for Mac, stuck on "updating" trying to upload to iCloud Photos Library

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  • by loïcfernandezcastrillon,

    loïcfernandezcastrillon loïcfernandezcastrillon Apr 21, 2015 11:59 AM in response to LIZZYLAB
    Level 1 (112 points)
    iPhone
    Apr 21, 2015 11:59 AM in response to LIZZYLAB

    Well after reading all those things about Photos getting stuck, it was already the case with the Beta version... Once again Apple made available a kinda beta to everyone...

  • by Welout,

    Welout Welout Apr 21, 2015 12:46 PM in response to jmrtexcol
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 21, 2015 12:46 PM in response to jmrtexcol

    I found a way to see what the upload-process is actually doing.

     

    In the activity-monitor I double-clicked the process Cloudd  (or pressing the i-button). Then in the tab 'open files and ports' you see the file which is open by the cloud uploader.

     

    You can copy paste the folder link to your finder (SHIFT-CMD-G) which contains something like: "/Volumes/XXXXXX.photoslibrary/private/com.apple.cloudphotosd/CloudSync.noindex /Engine/filecache/XXX/"

    When you watch this 'file cache' folder, you can actually see whicht files are being uploaded.

     

    Maybe you can find the file were the upload-process got stuck...

     

    Also when you monitor the tab 'network' in the activity-monitor, you can also see your upload-speed at the bottom.

     

    Don't now if some-one find this usefull, but it can help you seeing what your Mac is actually doing by uploading something to the cloud.

  • by Liverpool Webmaster,

    Liverpool Webmaster Liverpool Webmaster Apr 21, 2015 11:41 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 21, 2015 11:41 PM in response to Csound1

    Greetings! I did manage to upload all my 28,000 photos and 4 small videos to iCloud using the method mentioned in my previous post. The one thing I forgot to write was that you had to go to System Preferences > Computer Sleep > and set it to NEVER.

     

    I uploaded 10K of the photos when I first started up Photos - perhaps a week ago. At the time I hadn't figured out I could watch the progress on iCloud and I eventually turned off the computer.  The last 17,000 photos took around 20 continuous hours to upload on Monday-Tuesday). The last 17K of photos I watched the counter in iCloud and the uploading worked out to around 1 Mbps.  I have to wonder if iCloud only allows a certain upload speed, or if Photos is limiting the uploading to 1 Mbps? I have no idea how much computational time a computer needs to get one 5 MB photo ready for uploading? My iMac could barely start up Messenger, and Mail crashed every time I tried to start it, with Photos sending my pictures to iCloud.

     

    As suggested, I did a bunch of speed tests on Speedof.me, speedtest.net and testmy.net. Here's what I got, on average, for my 2009 iMac with 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Chrome browser and FIOS with supposedly 75 Mbps download and upload speed:

     

    Speedof.me

    Latency 20ms, Download 80.97 Mbps and Upload 26.52 Mbps

    Speedtest.net

    Latency 22ms, Download 83.91 Mbps and Upload 94.62 Mbps

    Testmy.net

    Doesn't give Latency, Download 77.5 Mbps and Upload 40.1 Mbps

     

    I'm not sure why the wide range in Upload speeds? I do know that you can pick the server location you want to test with Speedtest.net. I'm in Syracuse, NY, and the fastest server I found was in Oxford, Mass. If you try different server locations, the measured speed varies a LOT. BTW, my iPhone 6 tested with Speedof.me at: Latency 11ms, Download 29.53 Mbps and Upload 42.79 Mbps. My MacBook Pro (2010, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) on Speedof.me: Latency 25ms, Download 68.87 Mbps and Upload 21.79 Mbps. I'm also unsure why my iPhone has a faster UPLOAD speed than download? Newer technology perhaps, or more free memory?

     

    Bottom Line - I did get all my photos upload to iCloud. I was only getting 1 Mbps upload speed using Photos and Safari w/ iCloud running so I could watch the uploading progress.  My internet connection is a lot faster than 1 Mbps. The connection was stable as the computer ran continuously for 20 hours. In that time I sparingly used my laptop and cell phone, but when I did use them they worked normally. If I tried to do anything else with the desktop, the desktop programs ran really slow or crashed.

     

    I was able to, eventually, get all 28K photos and 4 videos uploaded successfully thanks to some suggestions in this thread. I appreciate all that everyone does to try and help out!

  • by loïcfernandezcastrillon,

    loïcfernandezcastrillon loïcfernandezcastrillon Apr 22, 2015 12:12 AM in response to Liverpool Webmaster
    Level 1 (112 points)
    iPhone
    Apr 22, 2015 12:12 AM in response to Liverpool Webmaster

    Hello Liverpool Webmaster,

     

    How did you manage to send your videos? Because the only way I've found to send content to Photos Library without getting it stuck, was to use iCloud.com on Safari, I clicked on Photos there, and I dragged and dropped my photos. It did the job well without issue, but iCloud.com works only with .jpg. You can't upload videos there. Anytime I try on the Mac Photos or iPhone Photos it get stuck...

     

    For instance I take a video made with my iPhone 5S last year, if I import it in Photos (even a small file 10Mb) it get stuck on Uploading...

    If I send that same video on my iPhone 6 using Bluetooth, it get stuck on Uploading... too.

     

    The weird thing about it though, is that if I take a video from iPhone 6, let say I make a video of my cat playing for instance. Then this video is uploaded well to iCloud. So there is a weird bug there...

  • by Syd D,

    Syd D Syd D Apr 22, 2015 5:16 PM in response to jerryfromtitusville
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 22, 2015 5:16 PM in response to jerryfromtitusville

    Yep having this problem too. I have been able to upload my entire photo library from Photos on Mac (~600GB) to iCloud but my phone is no longer uploading new pics to iCloud, nor are they downloading to my Mac. 

  • by Syd D,

    Syd D Syd D Apr 22, 2015 5:47 PM in response to G.Lenn
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 22, 2015 5:47 PM in response to G.Lenn

    Here's some pics that illustrate my problem. I have the $20/mth 1TB iCloud plan and was able to coax Photos to upload all my pics (~600GB) over a several week period (uploads went noticeably quicker when it was only the public beta available... once everyone got 10.10.3, upload speeds dropped to about 1MB/s... I guess Apple's data centres got slammed).  However, my iPhone got stuck several weeks ago on the status shown in the second screenshot below, and now doesn't upload or download any pics. Nothing I've tried has been able to get it restarted, including hard rebooting the phone, turning iCloud photos off and on again, etc.

     

    Screen-Shot-2015-04-23-at-10.17.11-am.jpg

    IMG_7053.jpg

     

    Additionally, about 50-80% of the time, iCloud Photos on the web won't load, reporting an application error. I presume that Apple hasn't adjusted its timeout values for such large libraries.

    Screen-Shot-2015-04-23-at-10.31.03-am.jpg

    "Can't load Photos. There was a problem loading the application."

    Screen-Shot-2015-04-23-at-10.31.13-am.jpg

    "There was a problem loading the application due to a possible network error or missing resources. Please try again"

     

    If you keep trying, it does eventually load (presumably the server has been able to iteratively get through the library update or whatever it needs to do before loading the app...) and the first, initial screen of images shows...

    Screen-Shot-2015-04-23-at-10.33.43-am.jpg

     

    but then when I scroll upwards to older images, all I get is blank tiles...

     

    Screen-Shot-2015-04-23-at-10.33.45-am.jpg

     

    If you leave it for minutes at a time, some of the tiles fill with actual images. It appears to me that Apple's model here is 'scroll to the part of your library you want, and then wait for it to load'. This is so far away from usable it's not funny, especially as the web interface has no search feature.


    Compared to other online photo apps like Flickr, iCloud Photos on the web is completely laughable. It's still theoretically good as a cloud sync repository (if the clients actually worked consistently), but there's no good reason why the photo display performance on the web interface should be so completely and utterly useless at this point in time (out of beta).

     

    I am a tech enthusiast and I do understand that as an early adopter you'll hit teething problems, but it's rough for Apple to be (a) saying nothing about the problems and (b) charging full price for the iCloud storage plans despite all the problems.

  • by jmrtexcol,

    jmrtexcol jmrtexcol Apr 22, 2015 6:05 PM in response to Syd D
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    Apr 22, 2015 6:05 PM in response to Syd D

    Thanks to everyone that has chimed in with suggestions on how to fix this epic joke that the geniuses at Apple rolled out prematurely.  I cannot believe that, after all the problems everyone is having and the tens of thousands of complaints the tech support guys must be getting, Apple has not come up with a fix of some kind or even a recall of this piece of crap they just put out.  I am on my 11th day now, spending several hours each day messing with this, and less than 7,000 of my 12,000 picture library has been loaded into the Cloud......THIS BS IS CRIMINAL in this day and age.  The process is getting SLOWER if anything. 

     

    I have been a loyal long-time Apple customer and have bragged about the quality of everything they touch for years but this one is going to leave a mark.  I certainly am not looking forward to working with Photos (if and when all the pictures are uploaded) because there is a long list of complaints of duplications, missed dates, lost albums, disorganization, etc.

     

    iPhoto was a great product in my opinion....way to screw up guys!!!!!  Shame on you.

  • by yendoggy,

    yendoggy yendoggy Apr 22, 2015 6:10 PM in response to jmrtexcol
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Desktops
    Apr 22, 2015 6:10 PM in response to jmrtexcol

    yea what I think is a bit weird is that I haven't seen any mainstream articles on it.. normally some reviewers etc come out and write something.... I downgraded a week ago but still following the thread... I didn't have the patience and didn't know if I really wanted to pay for the storage for the service anyhow.. but was going to try it for a month to see if I really did enjoy it.... obviously there are lots of people having this problem but no public coverage really... strange...

  • by jmrtexcol,

    jmrtexcol jmrtexcol Apr 22, 2015 6:14 PM in response to yendoggy
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    Apr 22, 2015 6:14 PM in response to yendoggy

    yendoggy wrote:

     

    yea what I think is a bit weird is that I haven't seen any mainstream articles on it.. normally some reviewers etc come out and write something.... I downgraded a week ago but still following the thread... I didn't have the patience and didn't know if I really wanted to pay for the storage for the service anyhow.. but was going to try it for a month to see if I really did enjoy it.... obviously there are lots of people having this problem but no public coverage really... strange...

    EXACTLY....I have been searching for anything published about this disaster and I've come up empty.  It is like everyone is burying their head in the sand and hoping this goes away.  I cannot believe someone has not blasted Apple in the media for this fuckup....not sure what else to call it at this point.

  • by Liverpool Webmaster,

    Liverpool Webmaster Liverpool Webmaster Apr 22, 2015 11:28 PM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 22, 2015 11:28 PM in response to loïcfernandezcastrillon

    Greetings. I unfortunately don't have any "silver bullet" to offer you on how my videos loaded. My videos were saved in about in the first third of my iPhoto library (taken between 2006 - 2010). I had 8 videos, I was just experimenting with the video on a new Nikon camera at the time so they were not really important to me. All were less than 60 seconds long. When I first upgraded to OS 10.10.3, and started the Photos program, I followed the directions supplied by Apple (made sure iCloud was set up properly, etc.). I remember when I was starting the uploading process I got a message that said, because of all the photos I had, I had to upgrade to their 200 GB plan, which I did.

     

    If I remember correctly, the Photos program informed me it was preparing the iPhoto library, when that was done Photos started the uploading process. Because everything seemed to be going smoothly I can remember thinking, "Well, that wasn't bad." I don't think there was any kind of status bar, however, and I don't remember seeing any way to tell if the transfer was actually progressing. Again, I wasn't concerned at the time and wasn't giving it much thought. After a while, I began to wonder exactly what, if anything, was happening. It would have been nice if there was some kind of progress bar or update that appeared on the Photos screen that said, "Uploading photo number 55 of 28,000." Perhaps there was ... I don't remember seeing it on the Photos screen. At that time I did not have iCloud open.

     

    After some time (perhaps an hour), I took out my iPhone and looked to see if there were any uploaded photos and there was, so I just let the program run over night. The next morning it was still running, but I quit Photos because I thought perhaps something was not right. When I checked my cell phone, it said in the iPhone's Photos:  "All Photos - 10,007." I knew I had around 28K photos. At that point I figured if it took all night to upload 10K photos, and I had another 18K to go, I'd do it later. I DO remember seeing the videos listed in what was downloaded to iPhone. The rest of the story is in my first post.

  • by jordy_s,

    jordy_s jordy_s Apr 23, 2015 12:49 AM in response to G.Lenn
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 23, 2015 12:49 AM in response to G.Lenn

    Just thinking out loud. I also had difficulty to start things up, seeing a lot of the same problems written in these posts. But eventually it al synced (after a reboot) and now it works quite well. I only have 1400 photos and 180 videos in iCPL with 200GB storage, working on a 2014 15" Retina MacBook Pro (thus with a lot of processing power).

     

    What about facial recognition? I never used iPhoto a lot, but I think to remember this was a resource intensive proces, taking a lot of time.

     

    I also see that, when having shot a video on my iPhone, the "Updating..." notification show way longer than when just downloading photos. The same goes for my iPhone when uploading video. This does take a lot of time, but eventually it syncs.

     

    Might it be Apple installed a sort of speed limitation, where it only up-/downloads when your internet connection is idle? That would make sense, since Apple always try's to prevent new function slowing down existing ones.

     

    The fact that no reviewers are writing about this, does make me think the problem is not to wide spread. There's a lot of discussion in this thread, but when you realize how many Apple users there are world wide, it's still not that much.

  • by koocmj,

    koocmj koocmj Apr 23, 2015 12:57 AM in response to jordy_s
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Apr 23, 2015 12:57 AM in response to jordy_s

    it is great to hear it works for some people.  I have tried for 10 days. Don't get me wrong, i understand that to upload so much data will take time.  But the system on my 2014 mbp just hangs in the same place and the process stops.  I have left the machine running over night with nothing else happening. 

     

    Apple clearly have a problem.  The support guy on my second call did infer he had dealt with several calls in the past couple of days.

     

    out of interest was your library transferred from Iphoto?

  • by jordy_s,

    jordy_s jordy_s Apr 23, 2015 1:12 AM in response to koocmj
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 23, 2015 1:12 AM in response to koocmj

    It was imported from iPhoto. Besides that I manually imported a lot of album from Lightroom. I stumbled upon this thread when I also faced the "stuck on [Uploading...]" situation after running it overnight.

     

    Now I'm using it for some weeks it does run oké. Not as smooth as it should though. At this exact moment, it's again showing "Updating..." for quite some time now (since yesterday). This is after shooting a shot 30 sec. video om my iPhone. That said, when adding a picture in Photos for Mac, it does directly send it to the cloud and within seconds I see it on my iOS devices. Funny thing is, it has not yet processed the thumbnail for this newly added picture. And that's 20 minutes now. So it seems like it does queue things up...

     

    Screen Shot 2015-04-23 at 10.03.52.png

  • by Liverpool Webmaster,

    Liverpool Webmaster Liverpool Webmaster Apr 23, 2015 1:33 AM in response to G.Lenn
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 23, 2015 1:33 AM in response to G.Lenn

    More Observations:  Once I got all my photos uploaded to iCloud I thought my troubles were over. However I am finding that not to be the case. Here's what I have found with iCloud storage of photos and with the computer software Photos.

     

    On iCloud .....

    On iCloud I have, as best I can tell, all 28,000 of my photos plus 8 short videos uploaded. In the section called iCloud > Photos > Moments -- all 28K photos are arranged by date the photo was taken (hence the name "moments" perhaps). Some (very few) are labeled also with the location where the photo was taken (iPhone photos take near my router are labeled with a location!). NOTE:  Individual or groups of photos taken on the same day are not labeled with the album names as in the old iPhoto. In iCloud > Photos > Albums it appears that all 315 albums I made in iPhoto are there, but there are a LOT of empty tiles that are labeled simply with dates (the dates I believe are from the "Moments" mentioned above). At this time I see no way to delete the empty tiles. In iCloud  > Photos > Albums there are 4 selections you can make, 1.) All Photos (mine appear to be all there), 2.) Favorites (not your Flagged photos from iPhoto - the "flag" designation appears to have been left out of the new software). Favorites are photos you selected from Moments and designated a "heart" icon applied in iCloud or Photos. 3.) Panoramas (unusually long photos - may just be cropped that way). And 4.) Videos.

     

    BOTTOM LINE: Only real unusual thing is the empty tiles in "My Albums" -- and no way to delete them in iCloud.

     

    In the Photos software ......

    In PHOTOS you have 4 selections at the top: 1) Photos, 2) Shared, 3) Albums and 4) Projects. I'm going to start with the WORST news, in Photos > Albums I should have 315 albums transferred from iPhoto. I have tiles for 350. None of them have the names I gave them, they only have dates (except for a few with a date and then the words "Photo Stream."). Only 46 have actual photos in them, they do NOT have all the photos in them that were in my original iPhoto albums (not even close)!! Most "albums" here are simply single photos that I photoshopped and just threw back into iPhoto later. Albums is a DISASTER.  Apparently, all the work I have put into organizing my 28,000 photos into albums was wasted on my computer ... but NOT in iCloud! (see above).

     

    In Photos > Projects should be all the hardcover / softcover books you made and had Apple print. In Photos I only have books going back 2 years (15 tiles out of perhaps 40 books that I have made), BUT only 4 of those have any photos in them. Thus, only 4 of the 40 books I made seem to have survived the transfer from iPhoto to Photos.

     

    In Photos > Shared are photos you shared like on Facebook. I've shared tons, only 2 show up in this section, one from February 10th of this year, the other from  February 20, 2013!? I don't really care about this section, but it's not correct either.

     

    In Photos > Photos, all 28K of my photos appear to be there, they are arranged by DATE photo was taken, not by album name as in iPhoto. Most, but not all, of the dates appear to be correct. 93 photos are dated 2017, 2018 or 2019. No idea why those dates appear. You can chose photos to play a slideshow, "create or add to an album, slideshow or print album," or "share selected photos" like on Facebook. Slideshow works. I did not try sharing -- I'm not confident enough in the software to try sharing a disaster like this on Facebook. Create or Add allow you to add selected photos to an album. You can add it to a "New Album" which you can name, or you can SUPPOSEDLY add it to one of your previously made albums. HOWEVER, as I stated above, only 46 of 315 albums were transferred to Photos and NONE of them were labeled with the correct name (only a date). HOWEVER, when you select Add to an album, you get a dropdown box where I can select one of my 46 NAMED ALBUMS (remember that in the Albums section of this software, NONE are named, plus I am supposed to have 315 albums, not 46). So transferring individual photos to albums is messed up, because you have no album names to work with. (NOTE: You can change the date on a tile to an album name, but that new name does NOT SHOW UP on the dropdown box of album names in Photos > Photos. Albums is a real mess.

     

    I haven't even looked at EDITING the photos yet. I'm leery of making any changes and having Photos upload incorrect data to what will be stored on iCloud.

     

    Bottom Line ---> Albums is #$%&%!#. Albums did not make it correctly from iPhoto to Photos and you cannot even fix it in Photos to get back to where you were in iPhoto (with 28K photos I'm not sure I'd want to ... but it would be nice to have that option, or, better yet, if the **** thing worked correctly in the first place). Worse yet, Albums in iCloud is "almost" okay, but what's going to happen once I start adding new albums to Photos, what data will it send to iCloud? Photos doesn't have the same data for albums as is found in iCloud!!

     

    One does have to wonder how Apple missed all these mistakes. One also has to wonder if they can come up with a giant fix?? It's no wonder they haven't said anything yet. They've put 10.10.3 out for upload ... we first downloaders apparently are the beta testers. One can only hope they can repair the damage. I'm going to leave Photos alone for a while and cross my fingers.

     

    Sorry -- one other kind of unrelated event: Tonight when I looked at my iPhone > Photos I was greeted with the warning:  NOT ENOUGH DEVICE STORAGE. This device does not have enough storage space to store all you full resolution photos and videos. To free up space, store device-optimized versions and keep full-resolution copies in iCloud." I was then given the chance to "optimize iPhone Storage" or "Ignore." I optimized. You can select this in SETTINGS > PHOTOS  & CAMERA. I have the iPhone 6 with 124GB of memory. After resetting to optimized version I ended up with about 54GB of photos and 36 GB of available memory (storing 28K photos and 8 tiny videos).

     

    Dare I say this ... perhaps those of you that haven't gotten everything up to iCloud yet are ... lucky?!

  • by koocmj,

    koocmj koocmj Apr 23, 2015 1:31 AM in response to jordy_s
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Apr 23, 2015 1:31 AM in response to jordy_s

    thanks for the info.  Perhaps I have one file causing the bother.

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