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

To repair the database helped for me!

I got this issue. I have tried everything. I am able to "fix it" by repair database or logging out of iCloud and back in. But after a few days 3-4 days I´m back at "Updating..." on all my Mac devices. My iPad and iPhone says "preparing to download 18 items" every time. It´s really annoying as IOS devices battery seem to really go out fast as its constantly trying to do something but fails.

How to get this solved?

I am having the same issue with the updating, never finishes updating?

I hope this can be fixed soon, I truly appreciate this feature and I use it daily out in the field.

Now I have to manually update the photo data, forgot how much of a pain that can be!

I am in contact with Apple Support, will update if we get anywhere.

So far they suspect its a corruption on the server side of iCloud, and not my clients.

After hours of hunting, I have narrowed my issue down to photos that have both JPEG and RAW originals, where you have imported them from a referenced previous Aperture library.

If you use referenced photos previously, you probably followed the instructions to consolidate the library (ie. move referenced photo files into the library itself). The issue is caused by the fact that the Consolidate Library commend in Aperture/Photos doesn't work correctly if your camera saves a JPEG/RAW pair. If you selected to use the RAW original, it consolidates the RAW but not the JPEG. On conversion to Photos, it thinks there is a JPEG in the library, but it isn't actually there. When you convert to iCloud photo library, the broken link stops the upload process.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to test if you have this issue. The way I discovered this may also help others diagnose this and similar bugs:

- Create a test user on the same Mac

- Turn on iCloud Photo Library using your real iCloud ID, with Download Originals to this Mac selected in the iCloud tab of the Preferences screen in Photos. Wait until the library has fully downloaded from the cloud (I had to encourage it to start by opening some pictures).

- Log-in as an administrator, or give access to one of the users to see both your main library, and the Test User library

- Open a Terminal window. Run the diff command:

diff -rq [Main library location] [Test User library location]

If you have spaces in the folders, you must use '\ ' to represent the space e.g diff -rq /Volumes/Hard\ Disk/Photo\ library\ test/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters /Volumes/Hard\ Disk/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters

- This provides a list of the files that have failed to upload. If you open one of them, click Edit, select 'Use JPEG [or RAW] as the original' form the Image menu. If you get a similar message to this, you have the same issue as me:

- If you have this issue, I had to:

- In Aperture, select all photos with File Type 'RAW & JPEG'. Switch them all to use the RAW, and then Consolidate, then select all JPG, and consolidate - ensuring that all were then in the library. Tag all the photos impacted.

- Using my main User ID, rename the Test User Library and switch to use it as my main user library in Photos (Preferences/General tab/Use as system Photo Library button), and reimport all the photos tagged in the previous step.

If you don't have this identical issue, the Terminal file might give you clues to spot a common theme in the problem files.

Exellent! This seems to be working for me so far. At least it's now "Preparing ..." my 90,000+ photos/videos!

I knew it had something to do with com.apple.preferences.icloud.remoteservices, because that's the task that was hanging when I tried to open the System Preferences -> iCloud -> Photos -> Options. When you kill those files you suggested (and reboot) and launch Photos, the files in the remoteservices folder started to update.

REBOOT!

It's as simple as that. Mine was suck for 24+ hours. After a reboot it immediately started to "preparing" and now it is "Adding" (19K pics).

Bjorn

The CloudKit solution temporarily helped me get rid of the "updating" issue. However, it simply refuses to get past the "adding x" status. The number increases as I take photos from my phone. The odd thing is that iCloud Photo Sharing appears to update ok.

This problem occurs on my MBP where I have it optimized (about 90K photos). However, it works perfectly fine on the same machine for my wife's Photo library (around 25K photos). I also have no issues on my Mac Mini, where I am storing full resolution images. I' Ive been doing the iCloud Photos since the first betas on the MBP, so I wonder if that is also an issue.

Unfortunately, I can't apply any of the techniques to my iPhone 5S, where it appears to have intermittent problems sending photos to iCloud, and a lot of difficulty with Shared Photo Libraries. Activity has not updated since July 6th, even though changes initiated from the iPhone to some of the shared albums show up on my Mac. I've even turned off Photo Sharing, then re-activated it and waited.

I've given up with Photo's and reverted back to the old tried method of creating a folder, on two external drives (working and back-up) for each event. Having never been able to import my iPhoto library (over 200Gb) I've more recently found it nothing less than challenging to open the new Photo folder which had around 20Gb of images.

Over the past few weeks when I sought to open the two Photo folders (one for mine and one for my wife photos) it said it was 'preparing the folder' it would then get to 100% and then simply sit there and do nothing. Today, remarkably it finally decided to open so I'm taking the opportunity to recover my images before it decides to refuse me access.

Had a MacBook pro for a couple of years and have rated this much higher than a Window's based PC but I've had enough of not being sure if the folder(s) will open and give me access to the images.

I may make the occasional album (of a small number of images) for a specific event and most likely store this on the Mac's local drive, but otherwise it's back to the old folder method!

Maybe it's just me, well thats what I had thought until reading some of the comments over 13 pages of this thread

Oh well!

That works, but a terrible solution. I have 37,000+ photos, mostly all large, very high resolution files. Re-uploading can take days for me, even with a high speed connection.

I'm just trying this out and added a test album with 5 photos and 3 small videos. Guess what, stuck on updating 8 items. I'm not really feeling that urge to switch to iCloud at the moment.

I tried everything, and I keep trying, but nothing works. Really sad.

Is there any new information on this issue? I have two Mac's and two iDevices with a small 400-pic library.

I've tried the suggestions here in this thread but with both of the Mac's, the Photos app is in a constant state of "updating".

My hanging up problem is on my phone. And it has something to do with editing or deleting a photo (on iMac) while other photos are uploading to the cloud from phone and downloading to iMac.

I reset my network settings on my iphone and all started moving again. I deleted 2 photos in my photos app on my iMac now the phone is jammed again and will not finish uploading the remaining photos in was in the process of uploading.

This is a huge problem. No one should need to worry about whats going on in the background. You should be able to delete and edit away while other devices are updating their info, wether it be uploading or downloading from icloud.

Well, in the last hour it started to sync... at 100 Kb/s... better than nothing...