macOS Catalina problems: Photos does not sync via iCloud

It finally took about a week to get my photos to finally Sync, but there is a major issue with Catalina.

Both my new iMac 27" and my old 2015 MacBook Pro are each set to Optimize Mac Storage in photos preference. This was the only way I found that everything stayed synchronized. Also iCloud wants to store all the high-res on your Mac first, then it begins to Synchronize after all the high-res have been copied to your Mac, so it's a big waiting game.

Same issue, Mac Photos app is not actually downloading e.g. synching anything. It states it is doing something but nothing is actually happening. No data goes in, no data goes out of the Mac, its pretty clear, you can see it by opening the Activity Monitor and going to the Network tab and looking at the Bytes Written / Bytes Read columns and notice nothing is occurring.

Photos just needs to have an actual status of what is going on. We are not going to just sit around and wait for something if nothing is actually happening. this is absurd!

I have a very similar experience, also with support direct from Dave at Apple's Creative media team. I'm referring him to your post. A bit later today I will set out my process as you have - mine is a little different (photos my phone DON'T appear on my laptop)

I am very close to abandoning Apple Photos altogether and the Apple Cloud. I will buy a hard drive and put everything on there and maybe do photos on a PC in the future. Everyone I have talked to who is still using a PC loves that they are not using an Apple product for their photos! I never thought I would even consider it but I am paying monthly for several years now for 2T of cloud storage that is basically useless since nothing is syncing and to download an old photo takes forever! For something that worked perfectly and now months into Catalina with no responses from Apple and I am not willing at all to do what briansutton has done (I am NOT a techie, Apple has prided itself on being intuitive and was until Catalina) and taking two months to not even be perfect is unacceptable!!! I do not understand the rating system of these problems either -- what is a level 1 (4 points)? Is that so low on their radar that it means they think it is a minor problem? This is not a minor problem. Syncing, huge keyword issues, searching issues, etc etc. it goes on and on. When the only Apple tech I have talked to (a local person) says I need to go to Lightroom I think that is unacceptable as well and tells me Apple is not prioritizing this issue. I so wish I had not "upgraded" to Catalina!!! A gigantic mistake!!

Ok here's what I did. I created a new photos library as suggested by dsslr, made the new library as system library (this was on my MacBook). The photos started syncing. I then did the same on my iMac and syncing started on this also. I then deleted the original photos library both devices. When the syncing finished out of curiosity I restored both photo library from the bin on both machines made them system library deleted the newly created libraries and have been syncing ever since.

Please not I am a new iPhone user and only Hand 5 Albums not much time to sync, also don't know if this would work if syncing wasn't completed in newly created libraries.

Also check that your original photos library is named Photos Library.photoslibrary as I think mine did not have the .photoslibrary part before I made changes as described above.

Yay! Upgrading to 10.15.2 overnight appears to have resolved the issue. Changes to albums, folders on macOS now almost immediately reflected on my iPhone. Everything looks to be in sync. Happy days :o)

Thanks for posting fasol. Have you found a fix for this problem? I updated over a month ago hoping the photos would over time carry over, but I go to check on my computer to send some photos Ive taken over Christmas on my phone to send to family, NOTHING!! This is super annoying...

I checked all the settings everything to make sure that's not the problem and no. I tried to update again. Nop, not work.. ugh It was my belief that the update would make this process easier for us, not remove the capability and convenience all together .. complete BS!

Also: You can try turning syncing off; waiting a while; and turning it back on. Also, you can try signing out of iCloud.com, waiting a while, and signing back in. These are long-shot possible solutions,

I ended up having to hire a certified Apple tech to start Catalina over on my MacBook Pro. Then we "refreshed" the Photos app and it took more than 48 hours to reload. It is all syncing now but it is super slow doing any task including simple deletions. It is working across my three devices now. Since I loaded inadvertently (meaning I had no idea it had so many issues with Photos), I have spent close to $2000 trying to get it all to work. Keywords still cannot be entered without resetting the cursor for each and every entry. Absolutely hate Catalina for doing this but feeling trapped. It is my new understanding that this discussion board is used only by Apple users not Apple staff. Apple expects users to do the fixes. Makes me even more disgruntled!

I’ve been trying to fix Photos since the day Catalina was released. I’ve literally spent months working with Media Services. Twice I was instructed to delete my library and let it download again. Each time took 3 weeks on a high speed connection and wouldn’t finish the last few photos. For three months now it says 20 photos remaining. I’ve asked for an engineer to look into what file thinks there are missing photos. They said it’s not possible. Their latest suggestion, delete my library again! No.

I’ve been an Apple customer since the original 128k Macintosh and always been happy, but they really screwed up here.

Some time ago there was an iMovie update that indicated that one of its effects was to correct a fault that stopped Photos syncing in Catalina. This DID correct the problem I had been having since the very moment I installed Catalina. I too worked with Dave at Apple's Creative Media, but once I told him I thought this iMovie issue was to blame, they stopped answering my emails. Disappointing, but this DID fix the problem

It might be related to Photo Stream. I don't know exactly when it happened, maybe 10.15.3, but it's no longer possible to have both iCloud Photos and Photo Stream active within the MacOS Photo prefs. I know I still had Photo Stream active up to at least a week ago because I was using Photo Stream to send photos to an old device.

I had the same problem after upgrading to Catalina. Even after I downgraded to Mohave, none of my photos would show up in Photos on my Mac and would not download from iCloud.

The only thing that has worked for me was to download the google photos app on my phone and transfer all of the 1000's of photos on iCloud to GOOGLE photos. It took 2 days. The only way I can view photos on my MacBook Pro is to open my GOOGLE account and view in Google photos.

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.

Thanks for the advice John Hammer 1,

Actually, that would not be the solution for me: I just want to see the photo streams coming from my idevices, but I do not wish to save a hard copy of any of them as a default.

Someone mentioned in an earlier message that things got fixed after a late 2019 update of iMovie.

I did look in that direction and it started working (with the photo prefs set to iCloud photo = disabled and photo stream = enabled) after I ran iMovie for the 1st time and initialized all security settings with regards to Catalina.

Do other have similar behaviors to report?