iCloud photo library stuck uploading Yosemite 10.10.3

I have the same issue.

I have more than enough storage space in my iCloud library. My Photos library is about 160GB. It has started multiple times, got part way but never succeeded. Sometimes it starts over. For example, last night it said it had uploaded all but 700 items. Then this morning when I checked again, it now says I've got 36,190 items left to go.

A couple of times when I came back and checked, the iCloud Photo Library box was unchecked as though it had simply reset.

I'm having the same problem after upgrading my OS and setting up Photos app: uploading my iphoto library to icloud is stuck after uploading just a small part of my library. I left it on overnight, and there is still no progress. Another strange thing is that it says it's uploading over 10,000 items! That doesn't sound right at all! I checked my ipad to see where the stall happened and deleted the surrounding images in my photo library (thinking one of them may have caused the problem), but it is still stalled (although the total number of images to upload has decrease by 100 or so.....although I only deleted maybe 7 images.) Hmmmmm.....something is wrong here, but I don't know what to do next. Help!

Mine is stuck as well. I created a new system photo library and imported all the photos. I had a couple of errors while doing that, so I skipped thoses photos. It is still stuck.

The suggestion I found in this thread seems to have resolved my problem.

iCloud photo library not uploading

It suggested to log out of and back into my iCloud account in system preferences. As someone else raised as a concern, this does warn you that all iCould content will be removed from our MAC if you log out. I did it any way and when I logged back in everything seems good and iCloud Photo Library is again uploading from my Photos app. I did reboot after logging out of iCloud and before I re-logged in.

Hope this helps out others too. Also hope it does not keep happening.

MY upload is working now but it's very slow. Video files take a long time to upload so it sometimes appeared that it was stuck. I would sometimes lose my wifi network connection whiles files were being prepared for upload, so I turned off wifi and used my Ethernet cable. It' been one week so far, and I have 4000 files to go (I started with 11,000.) I had lots of video file files! It's been a long process but it is working!

Update to my comment above: I logged out of iCloud as others have suggested, and logged back in. It took a couple days, but everything finally synced, and the anomalies disappeared.

Same problem for me. Upload to iCloud photo library stuck after about 9,000 images with 19,600 items left and no progress over several days, incl. logging out and back in to iCloud and restarting my iMac. Also, images added from my iPhone that were successfully uploaded to iCloud are not synchronized to my iMac via iCloud (works perfectly though with the Photos app on my MacBook but that one doesn't hold all the photos of the iMac). Somehow the connection must be broken. How can this be fixed?

Well I've got the same problem... and I've done as recommended here - logged out of iCloud, rebooted, logged back in - no difference. I'm still stuck with 15987 files apparently uploading.. and never any progress.

And since starting to use iCloud, the performance of my iMac is appalling. I'm on OS X 10.10.3 (14D136).

I'm seriously unimpressed with this.

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.

Hi Dalebr,

This was my story (which I shared with Apple developer team on El Capitan):

I had an Aperture library, with over 42,000 referenced photo's

Out of those 42,000 I had 1,900 images referenced as both JPG+Raw

(These raw files where shoot with an Olympus OMD-M5 and Canon EOS400)

This spring I transferred the whole library to Photo's, initially as a refferenced library

My goal was to upload the whole shebang to Icloud, which worked out well

(Suggestion, I had to consolidate in batches because my HD on MBpro is not that big... improve that)

With some hickups everything was uploaded, except for those 1,900 referenced Raw+JPG images.

I searched all your forums and didn't find a clue. Than I installed Capitan, hoping the problem would be solved.

This is still not the case, the 1,900 photos with "J" I tried to switch to "R" raw for trying to solve the issue, didn't work out

There's quit a lot efforts/ data in the initial files (tagging, starrating, so ideally I won't solve it by importing it again, this meta data is stored in the library

Can you elaborate a bit more in your instructions? I'm not that kind of developer guy

Can you share how you runned the command for your situation?

- 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:

Were these the only steps you took?

- 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.

Thanks in advance

Hi Wdool,

Sorry for the late reply - I have been on holiday.

When the Photos application imports the library into iCloud, it should not import photos that are 'referenced' in the library (ie. are stored on the drive, rather than directly in the library). In fact, it tells you if there are any referenced files, and tells you to go back and 'consolidate' them into the library before importing.

However, there is a bug in the Consolidate command. If you have linked Raw and JPG files, it only consolidates the active version, not the linked version. There is also a bug in the iCloud importer, as it doesn't notice that the linked version is still referenced. This allows the referenced file into the iCloud import, which then gets stuck.

It is hard to give precise instructions without knowing how you library is set up, but try putting a selection of photos in a new library, and importing that after the following steps:

- In Aperture/iPhoto, select all photos with File Type 'RAW & JPEG'.

- Switch the selected photos to use the RAW version (click 'Use Raw as Original' from the Photos menu), and then click the Consolidate Originals command from the File menu.

- With the same photos selected, now switch the selected photos to use the JPG version (click 'Use JPG as Original' from the Photos menu). Then click Consolidate Originals from the File menu again.

- Now import the library into Photos and switch on the iCloud Photos Library (if this is already on, switch this new library to be the iCloud system library in Preferences).

The above steps merely force Aperture to consolidate both RAW and JPG versions into the library before importing, to workaround the bug.

You can ignore all the "diff -rq' stuff. That just to identifies which photos are causing the import to stall, and to help others diagnose issues that might be similar but not precisely the same. If you do use RAW/JPG pairs, you will certainly have the issue I describe above, and there is no need to run any commands in Terminal.

Thanks,

Dale

Thanks Dale,

No apology for holiday needed :-) This is really helpfull.

I can exactly identify the 1900 images, that's exactly the images I saw in Aperture (smart album) as both JPG & Raw, and the manual check in Photo's on missing photos (only 8 albums).

I gonna follow your clear instruction, makes sense, until the last step:

I have switched on iCloud already, over 40,000 images are uploaded, except off course the 1900;

- Now import the library into Photos and switch on the iCloud Photos Library (if this is already on, switch this new library to be the iCloud system library in Preferences).

This means, Photos will use this new 1900 library as main library and download the other 40,000 images again into the new library? Can throw away the old one?

I suggest confirming that the process worked as per the instructions first (maybe just try 100 of the broken images). If it works, you should be able apply the instructions to the original full library (i.e. the 40,000 pics plus the 1900 broken ones). I would back-up before trying it on the full library.

If you have problems applying the instructions to the full library, re-importing the 40,000 pictures afterwards will work - but it might not import all the ratings etc properly.

I know this it is not ideal, as the 40,000 pictures will need to upload to the iCloud library again. I'm afraid I couldn't find a way around that for my situation (it took over a week for my library to re-upload!) - there is no way to combine libraries at the moment. But at least it is a one time work around - I haven't had any issues since I did this.

Hi Dalebr, Maybe this tool can help in our situation.... I have to think it over how to approach this (later coming weekend or after my holiday)

http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/Help/migrating%20iphoto%20and%20apertu re%20libraries.html

Hi! I'm having the same issue... I'm stuck at 12,169. i want to check to see if the Aperture issue is my issue but I don't know where to find the images that are in Aperture. I'm so frustrated. Does anyone know if Apple is working on fixing this? makes me never want to upgrade my system again!