Photos not syncing from iCloud to Mac OS Ventura 13.2.1

What is the status bar showing in Photos on your Mac? You will find the status bar below the "All Photos" tab.

Check the status of your library in Photos for macOS - Apple Support

If photos is still uploading items to iCloud, you will not be seeing any downloads from iCloud, until the upload has been finished. This may take a while after the upgrade to Ventura.

As long as Photos on your Mac is still uploading to iCloud, it will not download new photos from iCloud. Photos needs first to upload all photos and merge them into the existing library. Then it will start downloading the new photos.

You might have items in your library that are incompatible with iCloud and are causing the upload to hang.

How large is your Photos Library? For my moderately sized library with just 50000 photos and videos it took two weeks for the library to upload again to iCloud after the Ventura upgrade. You may want to check, if you have items in your library that cannot be uploaded, for example very old videos, that are neither encoded HEVC nor H.264 .

Since my imac software updated to 13.2.1 Ventura my photos are not downloading from the cloud. Prior to Ventura, photos taken with my iphone camera would automatically appear on my imac photo, now they don't.

What's going on?!?!?!?!?

I have the same issue (but it's not just with Ventura...it's been an issue for a longtime). Photos from iPhone iOS sync almost instantly with iCloud Photos but macOS Photos on my MBA can take days before I see a sync, I try everything (changing from "All" to "Years" to "Months" to "Days" to try and wake it up. It seems to have a mind of its own and sync's when it's good and ready. I wish there was "Sync Now" button to manually activate a sync. I like doing cropping/edits, etc on my MBA. I know I can do an Airdrop but then when it finally syncs, I end up with two copies on my MBA.

Is there an album or folder "Unable to upload" in the sidebar? Then look at these items.

Otherwise you have to find out by systematic searching, which items are missing in iCloud.

The usual suspects are older videos, that are using a codec, that is no longer supported. The videos are easy to check, if you do not have too many.

You could also search systematically with a smart album for image files, that are neither JPEG nor hEIC nor TIFF or the RAW format you are using with your camera. I had to remove all PDF files from my Photos Library, all audio files, all .PICT or .BMP files to get Photos syncing again.

To test an image or video, if it is in a supported format, export the original from Photos, then try to import the exported file into a different Photos Library. You will get an error message, if the file needs converting to a different format.

My Ventura-based Mac Studio just stopped uploading to iCloud this morning -- been saying "Syncing 45 Items to iCloud · Pause" for the past 2 hours.

Force quit, restart -- nothing works. :-(

However, both iPad and iPhone have no trouble syncing with iCloud.

I've checked iCloud settings...nothing has changed and still have ample storage.

Try to find out which 45 photos are missing in iCloud and cannot be uploaded. Compare your recently imported photos from your Mac to the photos in Photos at www.icloud.com . Are there any items in an unusual format? Export the photos that the mac does not upload to iCloud to a folder on your Mac, then delete them from Photos, also from Recently Deleted. Does the message about uploading change? Once the upload has finished, Photos should start downloading from iCloud.

How can you tell what items are preventing the sync/stalling the upload? Mine has said "Syncing 2 items" for two weeks.