iCloud Photos not downloading.

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Level 1

5 points

iCloud Photos not downloading.

Hi,

I've got an issue with photos taken on my iPhone are not syncing to the Mac. The photos are syncing from the iPhone to iCloud.com so the issue is not on the phone side.

Mac is running 11.5.1 (Big Sur). In system preferences --> iCloud, Photo's is turned on.

In Photos --> preferences --> iCloud I have iCloud Photos enabled with download originals to the Mac selected. In this mode no photo stream shows up under album's (expected??) and the photos are months old in the Library (ie not updated). It does say "Updating..." under the photo and video count but it never does.

Problem seems to be around the Updating that never completes perhaps.

Any ideas?

Thanks

iMac 27″, macOS 10.12

Posted on Aug 6, 2021 4:27 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

TonyCollinet

Level 7

23,972 points

Aug 6, 2021 4:27 PM in response to Scah

Be careful about deleting in iCloud. They will also be deleted on your devices (iCloud syncs.). You need to be looking in the photos app on your mac for items which cannot be uploaded. Not in iCloud.

Your library is about 2x the size mine was - so it could easily be 4 days or more if the sync is now running.

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Answer 2

Aug 6, 2021 5:40 AM in response to Scah

When you say "never completes" how long has it been updating? And how large is your library.

If you've done anything to try to get it to complete, such as turning iCloud on/off in either system or photos preferences, or if you've moved your library. even some system updates, you may have triggered a complete resync of your library. This can take days or even weeks for a large library. For reference I synced a 50GB 5000 item library (small) and it took a full 48 hours.

Alternatively you may have items in your library (especially likely with some video formats) that are no longer possible to upload to iCloud and these might block the process. Do you have an "unable to upload" album in your library? If not, can you create a smart album with the condition "photo - is - unable to upload to icloud"

If there are photos or videos in either of those places, somthing about the format makes them incompatible with Photos/iCloud. You will need to export them with file>export unmodified origianal, check they are successfully exported, convert them to a compatible format, delete them from the library, then re-import the converted versions.

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Answer 3

Scah Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 6, 2021 3:58 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Left on its own to sort it out its been "updating" since April :-). I did try turning iCloud on/off and since that time it's been about 12 hours so far. The library says 12,195 photos and 421 videos.

Interestingly when I was toggling things yesterday trying to solve it I turned iCloud off, and then enabled photo stream. So now I have the last iCloud synced photo in April, and a few photos from the last 30 days that came through when photo stream was enabled with a really big gap in the middle.

I'll leave it longer as you suggested, and will also go and find the "next items" on iCloud.com and see if they can be deleted to see if it's blocked as you suggested as well. All photo's/videos taken with iPhone but without knowing the exact date, it probably stopped syncing when I upgraded from an iPhone XS to a 12Pro. Certainly the last photo that synced is from the XS. No other sources going into iCloud I don't think.

thanks!

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iCloud Photos not downloading.

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