iCloud Photos on Windows 10 - Always Keep on This Device - Not Reliable

Hi

Anyone having any success in syncing iCloud Photos to Windows 10 using the new iCloud for Windows app?

I have approx. 30,000 images in my library, around 145gb for around 20 years of photos, all tucked up nicely in iCloud and working perfectly across Mac OS, iOS and iPad OS. Happy days.

I also have a (few) Windows 10 PCs , but have never really used iCloud on them, it has always been rather clunky.

I have a few family and friends asking me for advice on how to use iCloud on Windows, so I thought I'd play with a bit. I installed it onto a Windows 10 PC and on the face of it all works well.

The problem comes with the reliability of the 'Always keep on this device' feature, which works perfectly for my OneDrive where I keep the RAW files - iCloud is for the JPEGS - and that runs around 350gb.

Anyway I right-click the iCloud Photos container (I want all files) and choose 'Always keep on this device'. I left it running for a few days and it managed around 80gb before it started to go bad. It just stopped processing.

When I open iCloud Photos in Windows Explorer and choose to Sort By Status, I see which are 'Always available on this device' and which are 'Pending sync' but after 12 hours or more nothing changes.

In the spirit of turn it off then turn it on again, I selected those 'Pending' files and un-ticked the option to 'Always keep on this device', and as expected their status changes to 'Available when online'

Next, I selected all that were 'Available when online' and again set them to 'Always keep on this device' and sure enough the sync engine started again. then stopped again. In Task Manager I see some activity from iCloud Photos and Windows Explorer, but before too long it just stops.

So, un-tick the option again then re-tick it for around 1,000 files. Fail. Do it again for around 100 files, and it works.

This is a potentially great improvement to iCloud for Windows but in practice it just isn't reliable, yet it is based on the same API that Microsoft OneDrive uses, and that works perfectly on Windows 10. Ironically OneDrive is (in my experience) solid on Mac OS - as is the rest of the Microsoft Office 365 suite (as well as OneNote).

Anyone else fighting with this?

Paul