macOS Catalina problems: Photos does not sync via iCloud

I had the same problem, icloud photo library stuck on "updating" since updating to Catalina. Got mine to work again by creating a new photo library and then making the new library the "system library" instead of the old one.

I'm not a pro, so try at your own risk or back up your library/pc before. Your old library will remain for you to go back to if you choose to, I felt save enough knowing that.

Close photos app. Hold option and click on photos icon and create a new library. After photos opens, go to photos menu at top and click on preferences. In general tab select "use as System Photo Library". It will tell you that icloud photos will be disabled, click ok and go back in photo preferences afterwards and re-enable it. It will re-download all of your library into a second file which in my case is 80Gb, so make sure you have enough hard drive space. Afterwards you can keep your old library to go back to or delete it if everything seems okay with the new library. You'll see them both in your pictures folder, my two are named "Photos Library" and "Photos Library 2".

One thing I'm not sure of, my photos are still downloading but my albums are not showing yet. It's taking some time, I have 38,000 photos and videos. I'm assuming they will eventually because they show when I log into the icloud website. I'll come back and post an update when they are finished.

• I'm also not sure if this affects other apps like imovie that may have photos or videos from your library.

Hello guys!

Just an update. So I think mine has been sort of resolved. Still having issues such as having a bit of trouble putting some keywords to my photos. However, I must say that they have already updated just I hoped it would.

So this is how I did it (i also think I read this somewhere in this thread):

Open Photos, then click on Photos > Preferences > click iCloud, unclick iCloud Photos (automatically upload and store all your photos and videos in iCloud so you can access them from any of your devices and on the web).

After which, close the Photos. Wait for 5 minutes, reopen Photos, go back to photos > preferences > iCloud, then re-tick the iCloud Photos.

I just let this happen and it took some time to re-upload my photos. I think I waited overnight and rechecked it the next morning and I was surprised all my photos were up-to-date again.

I hope this helps but this is just what I did and it did resolve my problem.

Good luck!

I had the same problem, but fixed it with the following steps:

• Open Photos
• Open menu Photos \ Preferences
• Select iCloud
• For some reason, the option 'iCloud Photos' had become unchecked here, even though iCloud Photos was selected in the main system preferences panel
  • Check the iCloud Photos option
• Quit Photos
• Open Photos

Photos then started syncing for me.

Hi fasol,

Thanks for getting back to us with the additional information. While connected to a strong, reliable internet connection, try going to System Preferences > Internet Accounts next. If you're prompted to accept the iCloud Terms & Conditions, sign in with your Apple ID and attempt to accept them from there. You may need to repeat this step for any iCloud services that are enabled for your account.

If you're still unable to accept the iCloud Terms & Conditions, I suggest reaching out to Apple Support next:

Apple - Support - Product Selection

Take care.

My issue seems to be fixed. I used the iCloud sync repair tool to update my library. It took several hours to rebuild the library but it seems to have worked. Hold down the option and command keys while launching the photo’s app and follow the prompts. It takes a while but seems to have worked.

Dot, on your Mac you need to change Photos prefs (not iPhoto) so that Photostream is disabled and iCloud Photos are enabled. On you iPhone you can continue to leave Photostream enabled (if you want to) but you must also enable iCloud Photos.

I think I might have been the first person to report the iMovie solution here. I had been though other fixes with the help of Apple Creative and media support, and one which temporarily helped was creating a new library, but after several cycles of doing that, it became clear that after a few days the syncing stopped again. Photostream on or off made no difference. I have it ON.

Updating the iMovie version was the only permanent fix and my Photos has been syncing ever since. I have added my OSX App store screenshot showing the iMovie version I have which is 10.1.14, and it tells me I did that upgrade 4 months ago, so it's been working since then.

Just to say it WAS Catilina upgrade from an earlier version of OSX that stopped the syncing - it happened the same evening I did the upgrade, back in October. It took Apple support quite a while before they were convinced, but eventually they agreed and asked me to send frequent and specific error diagnostic reports that they gave me an app and a web link to upload the reports.

They eventually stopped answering my emails when I told them, and this page community, about the iMovie solution, although they had been very attentive up till then. I guess they had made the iMovie update partly for the Photos syncing reason, and saw no reason to continue the conversation, but it wasn't very user friendly of them, was it?!

iPhone and iPad were fine, and everything was there on iCloud, it was just the Catilina that was the issue.

Hiya! It maybe that behind the scenes the service which manages this has "got stuck". It is called Photos Agent and can be closed via the Activity Monitor application.

1. Close Photos completely via the menu or the right-click on the Dock icon.
2. Open the Activity Monitor application e.g. via Spotlight Search.
3. Search for "Photos" (in any of the tabs).
4. Select the Photos Agent service and click the black X icon to force it to close.
5. Reopen Photos and see if it starts syncing (try deleting a foto if it isn't obvious...).

If this hasn't worked repeat this process for the two processes that start with “com.apple.photos…” and the one that starts with “com.apple.CloudPhotos…”

This advice comes from : https://www.groovypost.com/howto/macos-photos-app-wont-sync-photo-stream-solved/

Good Luck!

Mike

For months, I couldn’t get Catalina Photos to sync reliably all my photos from iCloud. I didn’t matter if I downloaded the full versions or not. I deleted the whole library, started over, set the machine so it wouldn’t go to sleep, etc. Eventually after a few days, it would stop updating and was really frustrating. I saw that many others had this problem too.

Another problem I had (unrelated to this photos problem, but keep reading) was that during boot, there was a long pause. Boot times took about 51 seconds on a 2015 MBP with a 2TB NVMe drive. Others booted up close to 20 seconds. This told me something was wrong. So, I set out to troubleshoot and see if I could fix it. My drive was using APFS. I thought it may be the install of Catalina so I made another install in parallel to my existing one. It did not fix the long boot times. Weird. Then I saw someone said that drives that were upgraded to APFS had some unknown problems and that when he completely wiped the drive and make a new APFS partition and installed Catalina it fixed his slow boot problems. What the ****, might as well try that and I did. BOOM! Fixed! Now my machines boots in 21 seconds every time. There must have been someone wrong with the file system that only a complete wipe/erase could fix. I also restored from a Time Machine backup.

Now, back to Photos. I did the same thing that I have always done with photos many times before and guess what? It works now. It updates reliably all the time - it’s been a couple weeks now. Photos does act a little wonky at times but most of the time when I open it now, it’s always up to date.

Sounds crazy, but maybe back up the machine, boot the Catalina install, completely erase the drive by showing all devices in Disk Utility. Erase the entire drive. Install Catalina. Do your restore if you want, set up photos and let it sync. It may now be fixed like it was for me. I wanted to share in case there was something in the actions I took to actually fix it. Hope this helps someone else.

Hello fasol,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities! I understand that iCloud Photos is not syncing after upgrading your Mac to macOS Catalina. I would be happy to help point you towards a resolution.

If photos are not uploading from your Mac to iCloud, I would like to have you check the upload status of your photos following these steps:

About the status bar in Photos for macOS - Apple Support

If the photos don't appear to be uploading, try the steps under the "If you can't upload photos from your Mac" section next. Depending on the issue you're encountering, here are some additional suggestions to try:

Get help with iCloud Photos - Apple Support

If your iCloud Photos aren't syncing as expected after trying those steps, could you provide more details? Here are some questions that would be helpful to answer:

1. Are the photos not syncing to your Mac from a different device? If not, what's happening?
2. Can you view your iCloud Photos on the iCloud website or another device?
3. Did you have iCloud Photos enabled on the Mac prior to upgrading to macOS Catalina?

Cheers!

OK here's my update. Photos in Catalina was working fine on all my devices and Mac Pro but NOT on my 2013 iMac. Photos would NOT turn on in iCloud on iMac. Finally got it to work on the iMac. Here's how.

Deleted Photos Library (all of this is on the iMac only)

Created new Photos Library

Opened iCloud, Photos was selected

The Photos app did not sync automatically

I opened Preferences in Photos

Took a long time, it was nothing I did specifically, but FINALLY, in Photos>Preferences>iCloud, options appeared that allowed me to sync with iCloud

From there, the iCloud sync was very rapid. I have +27,000 photos & videos, it all downloaded very rapidly. I don't store originals on the iMac FYI.

Definitely a flaw in Catalina, but finally sorted.

Good luck everyone.

I think the resolution to this whole Photos problem on Catalina is in the recent update for iMovie - it says that there was an issue in iMovie stopping Photos from updating from iCloud under Catalina. Since I put in the iMovie update (see pic below), I would say that my (fourth!!!) Photos library is now working pretty much as it should.

I have been through the whole library recreation saga several times with help from Dave at Apple Creative Media, which has been very helpful, but I think the issue was the iMovie interaction with Photos and Catalina all along.

Watch this space for more. I'm now on iMovie 10.1.14 build 358560. I'm on Photos Version 5.0 (121.17.170). I'm on Catalina 10.15.2 (19C57).

I am adding the comments that the iMovie update has in the App store for the latest update I refer to above that I installed.

I have mentioned before a solution that I discovered for this problem that I had for quite a while from the moment I installed Catalina. Apple creative Media folks were really helpful but couldn't resolve anything.

Only when the iMovie version 10.1.14 was released did I see the hint needed - one of the iMovie release statements said that if fixed an issue with Photos not synchronising.

I assume that just as Catalina doesn't work with 32 bit apps (including all my adobe 5 software!) I guess it has some kind of issue with Apple's own iMove version that was current when I installed Catalina.

Since I updated iMovie, all has been well.

not only photos, but music - any time i try to do anything with photos, it breaks my sync.

I THINK i finally (FINALLY!!!!) found a solution for mine. I deleted my iphoto library a long time ago and have been syncing with image capture. By opening photos and creating a new library, even if its EMPTY, the sync MAGICALLY works again.

I had the same problem using My Photo Stream instead of iCloud Photos. The fix for me was similar:

using instructions above

uncheck "My Photo Stream" instead of iCloud photos

check "My Photo Stream" again

close the Preferences window

They started updating immediately