Q: icloud photo library (beta) stuck uploading

Same issue, stuck at downloading 663 photos for last day, and now I can't seem to get photos from the iPhone to the Macbook either.

I've tried rebooting the phone without success.

Hope someone at Apple notices this and gets out a fix.

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!

This worked for me too, I opened photos on my iPhone and iPad and watched the pictures slowly synchronise.  Mine was stuck uploading 656 photos but they are all uploaded now, cheers for the fix

Glad to hear it's working for some. In my case I can't even get iCloud.com/photo to work. It jams on 'setting up your library', or words to that effect.

Great news. Finally worked for me.

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.

Mine suddenly started working again. I did switch on iCloud Drive on my phone, but I am unsure if that had anything to do with it..

The whole iCloud is kinda buggy. Now it suddenly says 0 bytes available, instead of the 4,6 Gb that was available yesterday

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.

[Update #1]

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

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:

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.

[update #2]

Here is how iOS shows the space usage before turning back on iCloud Photo Library:

The sort order is wrong. Photos & Camera should be at the top of the list...

[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.

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.

I really wish Apple would acknowledge this issue. Surely there's a fix to be had?

Meanwhile on the web, I'm stuck with this...

On my phone, Info says there are 1,762 photos and 59 videos - 8.8GB stored in iCloud...

Sure would be nice to be able to see them!

i'm sure Apple will eventually fix this issue... It is just a pain to have to wait for the whole iOS release to address this issue (and many others) related to iCloud photo library.

How long have you been waiting for the library preparation process to complete?