duplicate "icloud photos" icons "windows 10"

Hello steve-f-57,

Thanks for posting. As I understand it, you're seeing iCloud Photos listed multiple times in Windows Explorer. I'm glad to see if I can offer some assistance. Knowing that you've already tried reinstalling iCloud for Windows is helpful.

For clarification, if you click each listing, do any contain photos or show that they're using storage space? This looks like it might Quick Access function in Explorer. If you right-click one of these, do you have an option to unpin, remove from Quick Access, or anything to that effect? You might check this out to see if it helps: Pin, remove, and customize in Quick access

Take care.

Hi steve-f-57,

Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify, what you're seeing appears to be shortcuts/references to the same iCloud Photos folder on your PC, correct?

If you're seeing multiple duplicated references and you're unable to delete them, this may be a case where your best bet is to verify that Windows is fully updated. Since you've already reinstalled the iCloud for Windows app, that may be helpful. If the issue is specific to these references in Explorer and everything else in iCloud for Windows seems to be working as expected, you may want to check in with Microsoft for next steps after verifying Windows is updated.

Kind regards.

@steve-f-57 I have exactly the same problem. I can't be certain but I think that it started after I received a series of Shared Albums from another person using iCloud Shared albums.

Does this sound familiar?

Did you find a solution?

HP Probook 445R G6 (AMD) Win 10 Pro 1909 fully patched

Thanks, Steve, for your detailed post

I haven't tried this yet as I'm right in the middle of something and don't want to risk breaking the machine right now as I am not an experienced registry hacker

So, I'll get to it in a while and let you know what happens

F (tessdesigns)

It's not part of the Quick Access. iCloud Photos is its own shortcut in File Explorer. I even tried unSYNCing in my iCloud settings and removing all the files, but the shortcuts are all still there.

It appears from the only helpful post here, is to mess around in the registry, which is DANGEROUS. You guys should get on this.

Can you offer any more assistance than misunderstanding the issue and providing misguided advice?

Users above have been left to find their own complex fixes, and registry edits are not an acceptable solution for consumer-grade products. I pay for iCloud storage to sync content between my devices, not corrupt them.

The registry fix didn't take for me either.

I now have 35 - yes, that's 35 - iCloud photos folder icons in File Explorer.

They all have identical creation dates so they are not "new" folders, and so this suggests it is File Explorer that is duplicating them in the listing

Same issue is also discussed here, with admin advice to contact Apple Support and “hope this resolves the issue” 🙌 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251627248

That would be great, thanks.

I am not supposed to include my email address here so maybe you could post a time-limited 24hr Dropbox link (or similar) if that's not too much trouble?

I am in the exact same situation. I contacted Apple support and tried changing the registry, but it didn't work. I hope Apple or Microsoft can find a solution soon.

Hiro