Level 1

41 points

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

Hardware

Late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina
2.6 GHz Intel Core i5
8GB RAM
Intel Iris Graphics

Software

Yosemite 10.10.3
Photos (latest release that is on Mac Appstore as of 2015-04-10)

Problem

Uploading status of Photos to iCloud Photo Library seems to be stuck at "Updating". No change of progress bar despite hooking up my Mac through wired ethernet for 24 hours.

I've tried turning off Photos in iCloud settings and then turning them back on. Restting, shutting down, all that stuff. No photos are populating on my iCloud Photo Library from my Mac as far as I can tell. Not even 1.

My Upgrade Process

Downloaded Photos Update
OPTION + CMD opened Photos app
Selected my iPhoto Library on an external USB 3.0 drive
Photos started converting the library

Photos library finished converting

I then tried to enable iCloud Photos Library, but it advised that only the System Photos Library can be used with iCloud.
I then changed my System Photos Library to the one on my harddrive.
I now am able to successfully enable iCloud Photos Library on the Photos App.

Again the problem I am having is that the uploading status seems to be forever stuck at "Updating" in the Photos App.

Anyone with similar problems? Anyone found a fix / work around?

Supporting Screenshots

iCloud Settings in Photos App

iCloud Settings in System Preferences

System Prefs > iCloud > Options Pane

Posted on Apr 10, 2015 8:36 AM

Top-ranking reply

yepster

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Nov 5, 2017 9:40 PM

I've had this problem at least 4 or 5 times now. My system photos library is on an encrypted external disk. I tried several methods over the years, varying from reboot, to completely disabling icloud photos and keeping a copy on the disk, then enabling it again. (this required me to upgrade to a 1TB icloud subscription, even though I now do not require more than 200GB). All very time consuming, confusion and frustrating. You could argue: why not put the photos on the internal disk, but this disk space is an internal SSD and thus limited in both size and write cycles for lifetime.

Today it was solved much easier, using the killing cloudphotosd described in one of the first replies in this long thread:

stopping the Photos app
and then killing the 'cloudphotosd' process (not kill -9 but kill -TERM was enough)
watch activity monitor, about one minute ~40% cpu and disk activity from the automatically restarted cloudphotosd
open Photos app - still updating...
repeated 1-3 - now cloudphotosd didn't take much cpu and no unusual disk activity
opened Photos app - 'downloading 16 photos' and now '17924 Photos, 1414 Videos - Updated Just Now'

Knowledge gained:

don't need to reboot
don't need to disable icloud photos and reenabling/downloading all photos
the size of the library (17K photos) is not the cause for a multi day long 'Updating' status - in my case above sync/download of new photos took only minutes.

Sorry for duplicates - I didn't read all 16 pages.

View in context

239 replies

lucianf0

Level 1

14 points

Apr 16, 2015 9:57 AM in response to jerryfromtitusville

I had exactly the same problem. I couldn't afford to reboot at this time so I tried something different. I looked for processes related to iCloud Photo Library and found these:

$ ps uaxw | grep cloudphotosd

lucianf 34898 0.0 0.2 2504104 13796 ?? Ss 7:53PM 0:00.11 /System/Library/CoreServices/cloudphotosd.app/Contents/XPCServices/com.apple.IC PPhotoStreamLibraryService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.ICPPhotoStreamLibrarySer vice

lucianf 34895 0.0 0.5 2586000 41820 ?? S 7:53PM 0:05.00 /System/Library/CoreServices/cloudphotosd.app/Contents/MacOS/cloudphotosd

I killed them all in Terminal (e.g. "kill -9 34898 34895") then started Photos and it synced immediately. So I guess one of those processes (or both) were stuck.

HTH.

Apr 16, 2015 12:29 PM in response to lucianf0

lucianf0 wrote:

I had exactly the same problem. I couldn't afford to reboot at this time so I tried something different. I looked for processes related to iCloud Photo Library and found these:

$ ps uaxw | grep cloudphotosd

lucianf 34898 0.0 0.2 2504104 13796 ?? Ss 7:53PM 0:00.11 /System/Library/CoreServices/cloudphotosd.app/Contents/XPCServices/com.apple.IC PPhotoStreamLibraryService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.ICPPhotoStreamLibrarySe r vice

lucianf 34895 0.0 0.5 2586000 41820 ?? S 7:53PM 0:05.00 /System/Library/CoreServices/cloudphotosd.app/Contents/MacOS/cloudphotosd

I killed them all in Terminal (e.g. "kill -9 34898 34895") then started Photos and it synced immediately. So I guess one of those processes (or both) were stuck.

HTH.

Lucian, thanks for the reply. I guess I'm not as tech-savvy as you so let me ask you: what does "killed them all in Terminal" mean exactly? How do you "kill" these?

lucianf0

Level 1

14 points

Apr 16, 2015 1:50 PM in response to jmrtexcol

Right, sorry for being so brief. "Killin"g means that you're stopping that process (running program); it's essentially the same action you do if you "force quite" an app (or end a task in Windows, if anyone remembers that). "Simple" kill ("kill process_number") attempts to terminate a process gracefully - i.e. it informs it that it should end; but if the process is stuck, this won't work. This is where "kill -9" means "quit immediately" (i.e. "force quit") and the process will end (in 99.9% of the cases..)

In your case what you'd need to do is open a Terminal window and then (and here's a more streamlined approach) run this:

pkill -9 com.apple.ICPPhotoStreamLibraryService

pkill -9 cloudphotosd

And this will kill the processes that have either of those names. In my case it did the trick, I hope it'll work for others as well.

Csound1

Level 9

60,113 points

Apr 16, 2015 2:01 PM in response to jerryfromtitusville

jerryfromtitusville wrote:

My upload speed is 2 mps and the download speed is 30 mps.

That's half of the information needed, how about the other half, the size of your iPhoto library (in GB)

The download speed is not relevant, you're uploading

jordy_s

Level 1

9 points

Apr 16, 2015 2:05 PM in response to G.Lenn

I'm curious where people who are facing problems, store their Photos library? Is it local storage or is it stored on an external (USB) drive? Is the "stuck on updating" issue possibly related to external drives spinning down?

lucianf0

Level 1

14 points

Apr 16, 2015 2:12 PM in response to jordy_s

Not in my case - 2014 Retina MacBook Pro with built-in SSD. I don't think it's got anything to do with the hardware, but rather the beta-quality software Apple has been releasing for a few years...

Apr 16, 2015 2:18 PM in response to Csound1

Sorry, the photo library is 85mb. So I have plenty of room in the cloud for the data.

koocmj

Level 1

12 points

Apr 16, 2015 2:19 PM in response to jordy_s

Likewise I am using MBP with library on SSD. I am close to just giving up on this rubbish. I have tried all suggestions on here, including the turning off iCloud and back on, repairing the photo database, etc. Nothing is working. I have managed to get 500 photos out of 3300. And this has taken 5 days!

Whilst i get it is going to take time to upload so much data, the wretched service clearly just keeps stalling with no warning or reliable way of restarting.

BTW i have turned off all power saving etc to prevent sleep.

Csound1

Level 9

60,113 points

Apr 16, 2015 2:22 PM in response to jerryfromtitusville

85 Megabytes?

Are you sure it is not 85 Gigabytes (GB)

If it is 85GB it will take 110 hours and 44 minutes (minimum duration)

Apr 16, 2015 2:32 PM in response to Csound1

Yea, it is GB not MB. Time will pass and we will see what happens. I guess another few days to upload will not be too bad. After that maybe things will settle down. Hey, thanks for the help here. I see there are questions about where the data base is stored. Mine is on the SSD of my macbook air. The machine is a mis 2013 so not so old.

Csound1

Level 9

60,113 points

Apr 16, 2015 2:34 PM in response to jerryfromtitusville

jerryfromtitusville wrote:

Yea, it is GB not MB.

In that case the minimum time possible to upload it will be 110 hours and 44 minutes. This is the best case and assumes a constant connection speed of 2Mb/s

Where the database is stored is a red herring, the internet upload is by far the slowest part of the chain

Apr 16, 2015 2:39 PM in response to lucianf0

How did you find these processes. My activity monitor doesn't show anything that looks like that.

Apr 16, 2015 2:44 PM in response to Parrish Jones

Parrish Jones wrote:

How did you find these processes. My activity monitor doesn't show anything that looks like that.

I have the same question for Lucian....what "Terminal window"?

lucianf0

Level 1

14 points

Apr 16, 2015 2:47 PM in response to jmrtexcol

Activity Monitor won't show all Unix processes running on the machine.. weird decision by Apple.

Terminal window = "Terminal" app, from the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder. It will open a black window where you type the two "pskill" commands I mentioned. Then just quit the Terminal app.

Apr 16, 2015 2:55 PM in response to lucianf0

Thanks Lucian....just found it and typed those commands. Will let you know if it works.

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