iCloud photos not downloading to device

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doering95 Author

Level 1

48 points

iCloud photos not downloading to device

Hi,

i got my new iPhone 12 Pro delivered on Friday. Setting up the iPhone using my iCloud backup worked flawlessly.

All my photos and videos are saved using the "iCloud Photo Library".

Here is my problem:

After setting up my new iPhone, the photos app showed all my photos and videos but it only shows the preview images. So when i click on an image it has to download every single picture/video first.

I checked my iCloud settings and the checkmark is next to "Keep Originals" inside the photo settings.

So the iPhone should download every picture/video to the memory on my iPhone.

When i go to the bottom of the "All photos" tab i see an indication stating: downloading originals with the number of photos that still need to be downloaded.

The problem is, that that number hasn't changed since Friday. So not a single photo/video was automatically downloaded to my phone. When i manually click on an image the phone downloads the picture and it is then saved locally. But it won't do it automatically.

Since Friday the iPhone was mostly locked, connected to a charger and in different very fast WiFi networks. I also tried mobile data but to no avail.

So far i tried rebooting the phone, disabling the iCloud photo library, logging in and out of my iCloud account.

I am out of ideas and hope that somebody can help me. I really need all my photos/videos locally on my phone even when i am not connected to the internet.

Kind regards.

iPhone 11 Pro Max

Posted on Oct 25, 2020 12:51 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

doering95 Author

Level 1

48 points

Oct 27, 2020 7:14 AM in response to cbhayward

Update:

Here is what I tried to no avail:

1. ⁠Cycle phone on and off

2. ⁠Toggle optimize/download photos

3. ⁠Turn off iCloud photos and turn it back on (this is a long process)

4. ⁠Sign out of apple account and sign back in.

5. ⁠Spam the Download originals button in settings.

6. ⁠They finally wanted me to do a full restore which I decided not to do yet.

HERE IS WHAT I TRIED AND IT WORKED:

1. ⁠Go into your photos and select 1-2000 photos at a time and attempt to email them. The process of doing this will force the iPhone to download the photos. What worked for me was searching for a year and then selecting the whole years worth of Photos and then attempt to email them. The display mustn’t turn off during the E-Mail generation! So I suggest that you deactivate automatic lock for this process.

You can cancel the email after they are done downloading.

This is a very „dirty“ method and it shouldn’t be that bad with an 1000$ plus smartphone yet I didn’t found another solution so far.

Hope this helps

Kind regards

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Answer 2

Oct 27, 2020 6:51 AM in response to doering95

Same exact problem. Nothing seems to work to get the photos to download automatically. Starting to see this problem reported by a growing number of people with large photo libraries and upgrading to iPhone 12 Pro.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

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Answer 3

Oct 27, 2020 10:47 AM in response to doering95

Thank you. Also saw a version of this approach by trying to add selected photos to an album. Seems like both 'force' photo downloads, but still not an ideal solution and as should be automatic. Seems either a bug or some configuration wasn't set properly during the transfer to the new iPhone 12 Pro that doesn't allow the automatic downloads to progress properly.

Also, would be helpful for Apple to weigh in here?

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Answer 4

doering95 Author

Level 1

48 points

Oct 27, 2020 10:58 AM in response to cbhayward

That sounds like an even better solution! Sounds like that would be faster than my E-Mail method.

It would be really great if Apple could fix this. I think it‘s really just a software problem.

Lets see if anything happens on their side. Not willing to do this again when I upgrade the next time.

kind regards

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Answer 5

kpic63

Level 1

8 points

Nov 24, 2020 1:44 AM in response to cbhayward

I have had my phone for 3 days now, everything from icloud back has downloaded except for the 30k plus photos. Some are there most are not. When I try to share a photo that has downloaded it won't send. Any help and advice will be welcome.

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Answer 6

Jan 30, 2021 6:53 PM in response to jemme

The same thing happened to me so I tried one of the approaches above. I think it was the one that said to add some pictures to an album. It didn’t work right away but within 24 hours my pictures had begun downloading. Now I think they are all there. Try reading what the person wrote above and then doing what he did. It seems to get things to start

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Answer 7

Jan 7, 2021 12:37 AM in response to cbhayward

It’s iPhone 11 too, it must be an update error or something!!

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Answer 8

Jan 7, 2021 12:39 AM in response to cbhayward

My iPhone 11 hasn’t & it’s been about 2 months, I’ll maybe try the email thing....

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Answer 9

Jan 9, 2021 11:35 AM in response to cbhayward

I tried this approach but it didn’t work. I still don’t have access to all the videos I made. Have you heard another solution?

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Answer 10

jemme

Level 1

4 points

Jan 30, 2021 9:20 AM in response to doering95

My new iPhone 12 won’t download my photos

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Answer 11

Oct 28, 2020 6:33 AM in response to doering95

Amazingly, last night my iCloud photos just started downloading automatically as they should. Overnight they completed the download (40K+ photos). So seems to work now. Maybe just linked to server overload, new phones, etc. Patience is a virtue as they would say.

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iCloud photos not downloading to device

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