iCloud not syncing photos on mac

If you have another Mac, copy that Mac's Photos Library onto an external hard drive. Then go to the non-responsive Mac, delete Photos Library, and copy the Photos Library from the functioning Mac into the Pictures folder. Voila! Problem solved, library now up to date and should keep working. WHY it doesn't work originally is beyond me. I suspect glitch in the Photos Library/iCloud link/sync.

Disable Photo Stream in the System/iCloud preference pane

and in iPhoto's iCloud preference pane.

Reboot and reenable both respectively. That should jump start Photo Stream.

On my Yosemite 10.3-flavored Mac, the iCloud System Preference has a checkbox called Photos, not Photo Stream, and there is an Options button beside it. Clicking Options brings up a pane with basically the same three checkboxes that are in the Photos App preferences: iCloud Photo Library, My Photo Stream, and iCloud Photo Sharing. Unchecking the checkboxes in either location unchecks them in the other -- they are the same toggles in two locations.

I'm also sorry to say that the jump start procedure didn't bring success -- I'm stuck on the Mac at 170 photos and an "updating" message (for over 36 hours now), even though I have 1600 photos in my iCloud Photo Library, and I have the same experience as Gbn5005: my iPad updates almost instantly with any new photo, so the cloud is working -- the Photos app is not.

Well, it proceeds -- turning photo stream off, restarting, and turning it back on has produced some weird results, namely that random photos from my history are resurrecting themselves into my default library (i.e. the System Photo Library on my Mac), with incorrect dates, while not actually existing in my iCloud Photo Library as viewed either on iCloud.com nor on my iOS devices. The legend at the bottom of the scrollable display on the nominally-syncing Mac library has gone from 170 to 221 to 550 over the course of these restarts, and continues to read "Updating..." but the updates appear to be only the result of the restarts, not any actual live process, and the word "Updating..." has no credibility for me, since in between restarts everything is just static.

You're right. My screenshot was from an early version of Yosemite.

All I can suggest at this time is to launch Photos with the Command+Option keys held down and repair the library. Be sure to have a current backup of it beforehand.

Thanks, I appreciate the suggestion, because I didn't know that command; unfortunately the situation remains. One thing I could add is that I began with an empty library which initially downloaded 170 of the 1600 photos that are visible in Photos on my iPhone, iPad, and on the website (the same 1600! So I know that part is working). Those 170 are now up to the 550 with the restarts. What I haven't done is migrate my large library (6000 photos) or a slice of it, and start over with that as a new Source Library. (I have switched among various small Source Libraries to see if that helped, but always empty to begin with.) I'm not looking to you personally to solve my problem, but am wanting to put it out there to see if anyone understands what the hitch is. I realize we're at 1.0, but OTOH Apple had a long time to test this, and so far the how-to sources I've seen (Take Control of Photos by Jason Snell, David Sparks/Mac Power Users/MacSparky) only address slow uploads, not serious disconnects like this. Anyway, onward... I invite other troubleshooters to chime in.

If you are using iCloud Photo library then nothing will download to your Mac until the upload has completed - I'd give is a couple of interrupted days and see - Mine was strange with strange progress and remaining numbers but once it finished everything was good and has stayed good

LN

I did these steps, and they're syncing now.
Thank you!