Question on upload to iCloud paused

Same issue, iPad Pro (2017), at the bottom of Messages appeared a little message saying uploading to iCloud was paused, and saying I needed to plug in the device and make sure WIFI was connected. Uploading was not actually paused, apparently, as I could see from my iPhone, which seemed perfectly up to date in Messages. I assume, correct me if I’m wrong, that for this to happen, icloud uploading must be working. Obviously the wifi signal was fine. Battery at 60%. I did not need to plug the device in to make the message go away. Restarting the device worked, I.e. the ‘paused’ message went away at least. What happened next was it said “uploading messages to iCloud” with a blue progress bar underneath, and that stayed on the screen a long time, and then, lo, the paused message has just now reappeared. I have plugged in the device and sure enough the paused message has gone away and so far not reappeared. Waiting with bated breath to see whether it will reappear once the device is no longer plugged in.

I charged to 95%. While charging, the Uploading message persisted. Now the device is no longer plugged in, and the same message is persisting. The uploading never ceases. But it’s difficult to think it’s actually doing any actual uploading. No new messages have been sent or received within the last hour. It’s been like this for well over an hour.

Next I will try a hard reboot.

I had recently upgraded to 2T for family sharing. Just trying to think of what could trigger this strange issue.

i be also have problems, still unresolved, with iCloud syncing bookmarks and open tabs between my iPhone and iPad. Do you by any chance have that same issue?

Same issue. iPhone 13 pro. Tried signing out of iCloud on all my devices, changed apply id password, disabled and reenabled messages in iCloud, restarted devices and of course "plug in and connect to WIFI".

Device is still plugged in and the message is now saying “uploading messages to iCloud” with a progress bar that is not moving. The message has stayed on screen ever since being plugged in, 25 minutes ago. The device battery % is increasing very slowly. I am starting to wonder whether this “uploading” that never finishes is using a lot of juice.

Hard reboot did nothing. The message has now reverted to “uploading to iCloud is paused, plug in your device and connect to wifi.” I’m connected to wifi and the battery is at 89%.

Next I will try updating iOS to the latest which has just come out.

My wife's devices are both experiencing this issue. iPhone 13 and iPad Air 4 both running 15.3 operating systems. I've searched other threads in the support communities and have tried everything from shutting down, hard rebooting, disabling/enabling Messages in iCloud, and restoring the phone entirely. Message keeps coming back.

Same problem. So I deleted text message data By mistake . Proceeded to wipe my iPhone and reload from the cloud version that had the message data (night before date) and it updated almost everything except notes and of course it did not update the deleted text messages ! Now it’s fully charged and has good WiFi connection and no matter what I do including turning hard off - and on still says “ uploading to iCloud paused plug in your device and connect to Wi-if . But why! I see nothing I can do different… frustrating .

Frustrating indeed. Try to bear with it for a while, and hopefully the mysterious message will go away eventually, as it did for me. I still have no idea what the message means or why it occurs, or why it went away. It’s possible that it’s a sign of a more general issue with cloud syncing. While the weird iMessage uploading message was occurring for me, cloud syncing for Safari bookmarks/tabs was failing. I eventually messed with it and it got it to work. (Interestingly, photos never seemed to have a problem.). It’s horrible that you lost some Notes during the restore from backup, that’s kind of scary. I’m always paranoid with these cloud things that if you happen to do the “wrong” thing, you may wind up wiping out the data in the cloud, instead of being able to restore from it.

Plug in your device. Ensure it is connected to Wi-Fi.

Shut down and restart the device.

See if that helps.

Test reply

Updated to iPadOS 15.3. Problem not fixed. In IMessages the message is now back to “Uploading to iCloud Paused”. Battery at 78%, connected to Wifi.

Giving up for now.

Mine eventually went away, after also affecting my iPhone 12.

Have you recently upgraded your iCloud storage by any chance?

No, we've been using the "default" storage allocation as we've never been close to the 5GB limit.

Hmmm… I haven’t added any new bookmarks recently but will test it out and see.