Photos on a Mac - stuck in restoring from iCloud

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Level 1

12 points

Photos on a Mac - stuck in restoring from iCloud

My question is why has “restoring from iCloud” been showing for days in Photos? Did the recent Mac OS update cause this? Anything I can do or should do to resolve this?

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.5

Posted on Sep 18, 2023 3:06 AM

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Answer 1

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Bill Riski Author

Level 1

12 points

Sep 18, 2023 5:03 AM in response to PRP_53

I checked my iPhone and it shows all my photos/videos have successfully synced to iCloud.

That is not the case on my Mac. Nothing is in “could not sync” status. All I have is the mysterious “restoring from iCloud” status. When looking at the recent photos in my library, I can tell that what is missing are the photos taken with my iPhone.

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Answer 2

PRP_53

Level 10

91,795 points

Sep 18, 2023 4:39 AM in response to Bill Riski

Bill Riski wrote:

Thanks much. I double checked the article you pointed me to, but can’t find the answers. The only status I have is number of photos and videos plus the text “Restoring from iCloud.”

The user is very correct .

There was no mention of " Restoring from iCloud " though there is and an excerpt from that same linked document

" The number of items that couldn't sync to iCloud. Click View for more details.
The number of items — if any — that are on this Mac only and not available to your other devices. "

" To see which items couldn't sync to iCloud, click the View button next to the message at the bottom of the Library window or click Unable to Upload in the sidebar. You can try to reimport the items from the Unable to Upload album into your Photos library to sync the items with iCloud Photos. "

The article does not address why this restore occurred. I suspect it was due to me doing the Mac OS update to 13.5.2.

I can say with great confidence, having upDated and / or UpGraded 3 different Computers from macOS 11 Big Sur to macOS 12 Monterey to macOS Ventura 13.5.2 and iPhone from iOS 15 to iOS 16.6.1

I have seen Syncing but not Restore from iCloud

My Photos that were stored on iCloud were never every presented with a " Restore from iCloud "

The general " Rule of Thumb " especially when a Laptop or iPhone is involved in Syncing, either to upload new Photos to iCloud.

Is to have the Portable Devices ( Laptop or iPhone ) connected to an Electrical Source

Otherwise, by default, the Syncing to Upload or Download will general put on HOLD.

This is done to preserve the Battery from running out of Power

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Answer 3

PRP_53

Level 10

91,795 points

Sep 18, 2023 3:15 AM in response to Bill Riski

Perhaps the above Article in Top Left of this webpage may assist ?

It may have been overlooked and that does happen even to me from time to time

Here it is again, if that helps

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

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Answer 4

Bill Riski Author

Level 1

12 points

Sep 18, 2023 3:39 AM in response to PRP_53

Thanks much. I double checked the article you pointed me to, but can’t find the answers. The only status I have is number of photos and videos plus the text “Restoring from iCloud.” The article does not address why this restore occurred. I suspect it was due to me doing the Mac OS update to 13.5.2.

I have a lot of photos and if I had known the update would do this, I would have held off. My bad.

I can’t tell how far along the restore is - very frustrating. I just returned from a vacation and have about 2,000 photos to process. About 400 are from my iPhone and on hold because of this. I need their geolocation info to make sense of the rest of my photos. Ugh!

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Answer 5

PRP_53

Level 10

91,795 points

Sep 18, 2023 5:09 AM in response to Bill Riski

Close the Photos application on the computer

" I just returned from a vacation and have about 2,000 photos to process. About 400 are from my iPhone "

Give iCloud some time to Process All the above Photos and Vids

It can take some time ( 1 - 2- 3 hours ) for the Process to complete and is Not Instant

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Answer 6

Bill Riski Author

Level 1

12 points

Sep 19, 2023 6:40 AM in response to PRP_53

P. Phillips - to close this out, here's the end of the story. After three days of Apple Photos showing a status of “restoring from iCloud," the process finally finished. It took three days, but the 'missing' photos taken with my iPhone finally arrived.

My angst would have been much less under these circumstances (i.e., just returning from a once -in-a-lifetime trip and finding photos missing) if two things were different. First, the Apple support site has nothing that matches my simple situation. My situation clearly was the need for Photos to restore my images on my Mac due to an OS update. Nowhere in the support forums does it mention this as a possible casue. The consequence of this omission and what the support articles/forum does address led me to believe something was wrong. It was just normal processing. This rabbit trail was encouraged by my second complaint. It took so long for the normal restore to complete that the status bar was useless; it looked like nothing was happening.

Later - Bill Riski

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