What is Mac Photos doing after I turned iCloud off then back on?

Question

Level 1

4 points

What is Mac Photos doing after I turned iCloud off then back on?

I recently imported 66 photos onto my MacBook Pro (2021) Photos app from a camera, but it was taking a while to sync (i.e. after several hours, it still said "uploading 66 items"). On my old MacBook this sort of thing happened often, and the forums are full of questions about iCloud photos sync getting "stuck".

Usually (with the new MacBook Pro) it all works fine and my Photos library (over 50k photos) is synced across my MacBook, iPhone and iPad. I have "Download originals to this Mac" enabled.

After some time, I decided to follow some (possibly bad?) advice and turn off iCloud photos on the MacBook, then turn it back on. Now it says "uploading 53,816 items".

What is Photos doing? Is it re-uploading my entire library to iCloud? If so, will I have duplicates of every single photo? And if so, how can I stop it from doing this? I would obviously like Photos to intelligently realise that almost all of these are already on iCloud, and only upload the 66 outstanding photos.

Thanks x

Posted on Jul 26, 2022 8:09 AM

Reply

Answer 1

drprettyman Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 26, 2022 8:23 AM in response to -Bubba-

Thanks, that will be a useful update. But what is Photos doing? Is it really re-uploading my 50k photos? This seems somewhat insane -- would it really do this if you just un-checked "iCloud Photos" (possibly accidentally) for a few seconds?

You could very quickly exceed your iCloud storage limit in this way!

This problem of Photos getting "stuck" uploading seems pretty common, and even happens on my 2021 MacBook Pro with maxed-out ram and M1 Max chip. I feel Apple should be sorting this out before they try to introduce dozens of new features. I wish things would JUST WORK.

Reply

Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

194,969 points

Jul 26, 2022 9:09 AM in response to drprettyman

Photos will upload the library again, after turning iCloud Photos off. But it will not create additional duplicates. The new upload is slow, because Photos is comparing your local library to iCloud and merging the local library into the existing library. During the merging it is moving conflicts between duplicates. But identical photos will only be stored once. You may be seeing two different versions of a photo, if it has been edited differently after turning iCloud Photos off, or the same photo may appear in two different albums, if you moved it to a different album after turning iCloud off. But you should not need much more iCloud storage than before, if you have not changed your library considerably in the meantime.

I would not interrupt the new upload now, unless you are getting a warning about lack of cloud storage. iCloud is estimating the required storage based on the worst case assumption, that all photos in your current library are different from the photos already in iCloud, but if it is essentially the same library, you will not need twice the storage from before.

Reply

Answer 3

drprettyman Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 26, 2022 9:19 AM in response to léonie

Thank you, I really hope this is true! It seems like this should be correct. When I got my new MacBook Pro I started fresh (the old one was 7 years old with Intel chip): installed everything new, and downloaded all photos from my iCloud library. However, I keep a Time Machine back up, and if I were to loose or damage my MacBook Pro now I would buy a new one the same and restore from Time Machine. In this case I would have a local copy of my photos library from the Time Machine backup, and also the whole library on iCloud. It would be ridiculous if the new MacBook then started to upload the whole local library, duplicating everything.

From what you say, I guess it would still "duplicate" anything that I had edited (on iPad for example) since the last Time Machine backup. Is that correct?

Reply

Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

194,969 points

Jul 26, 2022 9:24 AM in response to drprettyman

For the edited versions you will get duplicate versions, so you do not lose anything.

What I am doing after I had to disable iCloud Photos for whatever reason on one of my devices ist to delete the current Photos Library and start over with a new, empty library and make the new library my iCloud Photos Library. This will avoid the new, lengthy upload and merging, and the iCloud Library will download back to the new, empty library. There will be no risk for duplicate versions.

Particularly, when I am setting up a new Mac, I am just downloading my photos from iCloud to a new library.

Reply

Answer 5

drprettyman Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 26, 2022 9:28 AM in response to léonie

Thanks. I'm not sure which will take longer: waiting for the upload/merge, or deleting a 400GB library and re-downloading the whole lot from iCloud.

All this because I un-checked a box for a few seconds. I wish Apple would sort this out better. I never seem to have issues on iPad or iPhone, only on Mac, even when using the latest-and-greatest Mac.

Reply

Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

194,969 points

Jul 26, 2022 9:47 AM in response to drprettyman

The download will be much faster, as no merging and comparing is required. But as you already started a new upload, let it run.

I avoid everything that will result in a new upload to iCloud Photos like the plague - repairing the library will cause a new upload, or moving the library to a new volume, or restoring it from a backup. Whenever Photos cannot be sure, that it is the same library as before, or if the library may have been changed.

Reply

Answer 7

drprettyman Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 26, 2022 9:50 AM in response to léonie

Thank you so much for all your help. I already turned off iCloud Photos again because I was on my iPhone hotspot and didn't want to loose the connection or exceed fair-use data usage!

I will wait until I'm on my home wifi then delete my photos library and start a new one.

Jeeeeeez. :(

Reply