Photos for Mac, stuck on "updating" trying to upload to iCloud Photos Library

After a few weeks of working just fine, once again my Photos for Mac was stuck on "Updating..." for days. What fixed it for me this time, was simply killing the "Photos Agent" proces from within Activity Monitor, while keeping Photos for Mac running. The agent will restart itself and everything started syncing right away.

This might have been mentioned earlier, but I couldn't find a search function for this topic (this is stupid, right?) and did not feel like reading all posts again.

Photos is working fine for me now. One thing to be aware of is that the total number of items updating will include deleted items. The mistake I made was to clean up and reduce my Photos Library by deleting photos. A better option would have been to create a new library and just import the photos I wanted into that library. Taking what I learned when I did my Photos Library, I then cleaned up my wife's photos on all of her devices, and turned on iCloud Photo Library on all of them. I went smooth and fast. She has 2500 photos and 2 videos. FYI... videos take up a lot of disk space, and they take a long time to upload.

When I finished the update for "Photos" my entire iPhoto library was deleted. I had thousands of pictures that are lost due to the update. Does anyone know how to recover them?

Time Machine backup.

Your iPhoto library is where it was, in your pictures folder. iPhoto itself is in your applications folder, as it always was. You have lost nothing, take a look yourself.

This Photos issue is crazy. I have 3 Macs, a Mac Pro, MacBookPro retina, and MacBookAir. I have about 71,000 photos in my library and have it set to sync all of the originals to the MacPro and to optimize storage on my MBP and MBA. I have logged in with the same iCloud account on all three machines

The MacPro and MBA have no issues, they have all 71,000 photos/videos and they show "Updated Just Now" under the totals on the Photos tab when I open it up.

The MBPr shows all the photos, but always shows "Updating". If I add photos to another machine/device, I have to kill Photos to get it to show the pics.

The really odd issue is if you click "Shared" at the top, it takes about a minute or two showing that it is connecting to the library, then it says something and "Start Sharing" even though I have several folders shared. On the other machines, you click "Shared" and they show the shared files within 2-3 seconds (max).

I am repairing the database (Option+CMD when I opened Photos) while I type this, it is just about done... it has been on "99% Completed" for a while... if it makes a difference, I will post it...

No change after the repair, still "Updating" and it still won't show shared pics...

The MacPro and MBA have no issues, they have all 71,000 photos/videos and they show "Updated Just Now" under the totals on the Photos tab when I open it up.

The MBPr shows all the photos, but always shows "Updating". If I add photos to another machine/device, I have to kill Photos to get it to show the pics.

71,000 images to be processed and make sure the original is on the machine - no wonder it is always updating - you just have to quit messing with it and give it time to finish - which will be a long time and that is only an estimate

Given that two system with optimized libraries are fine I believe you just need patience for the "master" library with all of the 71,000 orginials

LN

gmc74 wrote:

No change after the repair, still "Updating" and it still won't show shared pics...

Shared pictures do not download until the initial upload is complete - give it time

LN

71,000 is a lot of images. It took days for my iCloud Photo Library to upload, and I had 5,000 images. Mine is working, and it's great. The long upload time is due to a combination of things, but I feel it's mostly because of slow internet speeds, and then due to overloaded servers on Apple's side, I'm speculating here. I have been suggesting to people who want to turn on iCloud Photo Library to do so with a fresh library and a few photos, get that working, and then add photos and organize over a period of time. It's much less frustrating that way since you see it start and complete a task rather than you wondering if it's working since it takes days and days.

The MacPro has all the pictures

The MBA is optimized and shows all (it took a day or two to sync everything)

The MBPr is optimized, still shows "Updating" but nothing is happening. It has been several weeks. I have even gone through the process of removing the iCloud integration on this machine, deleting the library and starting over (3 weeks ago), still nothing.

This isn't an issue with it not catching up, the MBA and MBPr are configured the exact same way, but the MBPr is stuck at "Updating"

It isn't a time issue, it is an issue with the software. I am several weeks into this, if it was a timing issue, the MBA would have the same problem as the MBPr

The 71,000 images/videos equate to a database that is 287 GB. I have a 150Mbps/50Mbps connection, so it did take a few days to get everything up to the cloud and back down again. That being said, this was weeks ago.

I won't begin to guess where the issue lies, but I would venture to say it has something to do with knowing when the cloud and local databases are in sync. That is not as simple as it seems, and I think there are a few bugs that need to be worked out.

THIS WORKED FOR ME! :

1. Create a new library

created a fresh new blank photos library and designated it my system library

http://osxdaily.com/2015/04/13/make-new-photo-library-photos-mac-os-x/

2. Designate that new library as the system library

Designate a System Photo Library in Photos - Apple Support

SEE LINKS FOR DETAILS ON HOW-TO

I have 140,000 photos and it works!!!!

It was driving me crazy for several days and nights.

I did the 2 steps above and its flowing now like it should.

Good Luck!!! Michael

BTW My original upload to the iCloud from MACBOOK PRO Retina too a full month. 30 days.

Then each of my iPads/iphones too 5 days to download.

Try deleting “~/Library/Containers/com.apple.cloudphotosd/Data/Library/Application Support/com.apple.cloudphotosd/” to rebuild the internal databases.