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icloud photo library (beta) stuck uploading

My iphone has been stuck uploading photos to the new icloud photo library (beta) for a day now. Any advise to get this going?

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.1

Posted on Oct 21, 2014 12:57 PM

Reply
194 replies

Dec 21, 2014 2:09 PM in response to jasonfromwest new york

It worked for me finally!


First it was stuck at 106 photos uploading for half a day. I searched all over the Internet and couldn't find any official help page on this.


Then I sat down, and turned on everything to see if that makes it go through: Photo app on iphone, Setting app on iphone, iCloud.com/photos (logged in) on Mac, and iPhoto app on Mac. I also made sure network is working (i had internet speed testing running).


Suddenly on my iCloud account more and more photos started to flow in. I immediately checked the status bar on my iPhone; it now said "Updating" and the bar was moving fast.


btw, when i turned on the beta, the "photo stream" tab on iPhone Photo app disappeared, which was expected and totally makes sense.


Good luck, guys!

Dec 24, 2014 5:01 PM in response to jasonfromwest new york

I was having this problem as well. In my case, it appears that I didn't have enough iCloud storage to house all of the photos and videos I'd accumulated on my iPhone 6 Plus. I upgraded to the 200GB option ($3.99/month here in Canada), restarted the phone and toggled the iCloud Photo Library (Beta) setting on and off (not sure if this was necessary)…and suddenly the upload indicator started to move again.


It did take a while for everything to upload, despite having access to a fast Internet connection, and eventually everything made its way into the cloud. I also discovered that, the upload only occurs when on a Wi-Fi connection AND plugged in to a power source.


Even though it's a beta, I'm surprised that Apple didn't make it more obvious that I'd run out of space. Hopefully issues like this will be a thing of the pass once this service goes out of beta.

Jan 4, 2015 6:45 AM in response to hxy

It doesn't work for me. Plus, my iPad which was still working fine with photo library upload is now in the same situation. So, I'll try this:


  1. Transfert pictures not uploaded to iCloud via AirDrop to my iPad (I don't want to lose them)
  2. Turn off iCloud Photo Library (Beta) on my iPhone
  3. Reboot iPhone
  4. Turn on iCloud Photo Library (Beta) on my iPhone


Then I'll look for the photos to re-download and see if syncing is working again. I'll keep this discussion posted on my process and maybe ... success.

Jan 4, 2015 7:18 AM in response to hxy

[Update #1]

Turning off iCloud Photo Libray on my iPhone gave me two (normal) warnings:

User uploaded file

My understanding of this warning is that I can choose to download all my pictures currently on iCloud to my device (thus replacing what is on my iPhone). I choose "Remove from iPhone" since I wanted to "clean" my photos library. Next I got this warning:


User uploaded file

This warning was also expected because of my first choice. After doing that, icloud photo library (beta) was off and I waited a few minutes for my device to reclam the space (I use a notification center widget called iMonitor).


I was curious to see what was left on Photos.app so I launched it... What a surprise, all pictures were they but browsing through them produced black spaces all over... I decided to reboot my iPhone. I came back in Photos.app and still, all pictures were there and same behaviour while trying to browse them. I then opened Settings.app and General / Usage / Storage and finally Photos & Camera was showing something unexpected: Photo Library was shown as taking up 4,3 gigs of space...?? This is not what I would call a clean state..


I decided to go ahead and execute the rest of the initial plan, turn iCloud Photo Library (beta) ON and see how things goes. I'll update this post with more results.

Jan 4, 2015 7:40 AM in response to JFM67

[update #3]


Turning on iCloud Photo Library (beta) again didn't produce the expected behaviour. The iPhone stated that 711 pictures had to be uploaded to iCloud. I let the process a few minutes and the uploading was still stucked!!!! But, Since I didn't want to get duplicates all over in my iCloud Photo Library, I stopped the process by turning iCloud Photo Library (beta) off again.

User uploaded file


My understanding is this: turning off iCloud Photo Library did not erase the local database of pictures. This is why more than 4 gigs of space was still consumed. If I decided to let the process go for a long time, the process would probably still jammed at the same stage: uploading xxx items.


A possible conclusion: iOS 8.1.2 is having a issue with one or more items in the picture database that freezes the uploading process.

Next step: delete all pictures from my iPhone with Image Capure (an app built in OS X). I'll update the discussion with my new findings.

icloud photo library (beta) stuck uploading

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