Why does Photo take so long up upload photos to iCloud?

Based on what people have posted in the past, the upload rates are extremely slow and for some people, it has taken a couple of weeks. Essentially, it is your choice whether or not to continue.

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In case someone is seeing the thread: I talked with someone at Apple Care yesterday. He confirmed that the photos that are already stored on my iMac would not be deleted if I stop uploading photos to iCloud. He recommended having them uploaded as after the pain of doing so, it is nice to have them available to my iPhone and iPad. Not sure it is worth the pain.

It is important to have the box, "Download Originals to this Mac", checked in Photos, Preferences, iCloud, iCloud Photo Library (also checked). That will insure that all of the originals are stored on my iMac. I have "My Photo Stream" and "iCloud Photo Sharing" both unchecked

I have had it paused for a couple of days, working on other problems with our new iPhones (very difficult to get them to complete the download of the restore from the old backup). Stopped this as it was slowing down the WiFi on other devices.

Last night at midnight I resumed uploading the photos from my iMac to iCloud. After eight hours, i have uploaded another 1,292 items.

So from my sketchy records: Since I started uploading on Monday I have let it run for about sixteen total hours and have uploaded a total of 5.08 GBytes of photos. It tells me that I have another 14.35 GBytes of photos to upload. So, at this rate it will take about another 61 hours to upload all my photos. Looks like my WiFi is not being affected as much now, perhaps because the iPhones have stopped downloading so much data?

Anyone know how I can find out the total number of photos I have stored on this iMac? I don't see an option to see the photos stored there. Finder does find the photo library, but it is one big library that includes more than just the photos and finder can not see inside the library. Clicking on it with finder opens Photo. When I started keeping records of this upload it said I had 7,071 items to download. That number goes down each time it reports progress (every fifteen minutes or so.

AppleCare confirmed that it is a very slow process and didn't know if Apple is purposely making the upload slow, or their iCloud servers are overloaded. It's more than just the slowness of my DSL uplink! Perhaps they slow it down so that it doesn't tax my local WiFi so much?? I can do a direct wire connect to my DSL modem, but the bottleneck is not in my WiFi (Airport Extreme WiFi Router connected directly to the DSL modem and sitting next to my iMac).

I'd love to hear from others who are having this same difficulty in uploading photos to the iCloud. Or better, some suggestions as to how to proceed. My wife has the same problem, except that she has three times as many photos and videos stored on her MBP.

Comments, suggestions???

Thanks,

Vee

PS Took two tried to get this to post. Maybe the upload is affecting my Internet???

Anyone know how I can find out the total number of photos I have stored on this iMac? I don't see an option to see the photos stored there.

You can see the total number of photos in your Photos Library in the Info panel:

Select the "Photos" item in the sidebar of the Photos main window and make sure, that no photo is selected, only the "Photos" item. Then press the key combination ⌘I to open the Info panel.

You will see the total number of photos and videos in the panel.

If you have many hidden items, select the "All Photos" album instead and do the same. Then the hidden photos will be included in the total number of items.

The upload of my library took roughly three days. I used a wired connection and not the Wi-Fi.

You may want to check, if your library contains items that cannot be uploaded, because the file format is not supported.

If you are using Photos on MacOS X El Capitan you can create a smart album with these constraints: In will show all photos that cannot be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library.

If this album is not empty, check the file format of the items in it.

Thank you! Wonder why they don't make this a more obvious option? Tells me exactly what I wanted to know.

Now, it if would only upload more quickly!

You're welcome 🙂

I expect, the upload will be faster in a few month. Right now are so many new users starting with iCloud Photo Library. It was the same when iTunes Match was first released. I had to wait three weeks for my iTunes Library with only 16000 songs to upload to iCloud.

Leonie, Thanks for your help and suggestions. My photos finally were all uploaded to iCloud, took several days.

Now we are uploading my wife's photos and it is also going very slow. If fact it loaded a bunch of them and then stopped on 15,840 items. It sat at that number for a whole day. I moved it closer to the WiFi modem and it showed that 15,798 items were waiting to move to the cloud. I was wondering if it had got stuck. Now it might be uploading, time will tell. Mine were going to the cloud about 20 items every seven minutes.

Her MBP is not updated yet to El Capitan yet, still running Yosemite 10.10.5. Need to update but wanted to move the photos first. I want to try your suggestion to see if she has something that can't be uploaded. I can create a smart albumn, but can't see any way to set up the search criteria you recommend.

Do we need to update her MBP to ElCapitan before we can move the photos to iCloud?

Is that also necessary to create the smart album?

I can create a smart albumn, but can't see any way to set up the search criteria you recommend.

Do we need to update her MBP to ElCapitan before we can move the photos to iCloud?

iCloud Photo Library should be able to upload in Yosemite as well. But the smart album is only available in El Capitan.

The Photos.app is much better in El Capitan. There have several new features been added - you can now add locations to photos, add titles or captions to several photos at once, albums can be sorted ascending and descending. If you are using Photos a lot, it would be worth the upgrade to El Capitan.

Thanks again! We are doing a time machine backup now and then will update to El Capitan. Then I will try your suggestion to create the smart album after the upgrade.

I created the smart album on this iMac, but nothing showed up in it. Do I need to do anything to have it check the photos, or is it automatic?

I probably don't have any photos on the iMac that won't upload as it uploaded all of them.

If there are photos on the MBP that can't be uploaded, will they be collected in the smart folder?

Really appreciate your help and advice.

Vee

I created the smart album on this iMac, but nothing showed up in it. Do I need to do anything to have it check the photos, or is it automatic?

It is automatic.

If there are photos on the MBP that can't be uploaded, will they be collected in the smart folder?

They will be in the smart album, yes.

Does the current pitifully paced upload speed (also a function of one's

internet service) affect updates to my Photos library - I've now been

waiting days for revisions to show up on tv w/o satisfaction.

Thanks, Tom

Leonie,

Still uploading photos. Have a few quick questions for you:

Just discovered that my wife's iPhone 6S is also uploading photos and videos to iCloud, along with her MBP. Problem is that the most of the photos on her iPhone 6S are also on her MBP. Both seem to be trying to upload at the same time. Is this why it is taking so long for the MBP to complete (it's been uploading for over four weeks)? Will the photos be duplicated on iCloud? Or, does it check for duplicates?

Some of her photos have not been moved to the MBP. With photo stream on and with the upload of her photos, I'm assuming that they will all eventually get to iCloud and then to the MBP, as she is storing high resolution photos on the MBP. Photo stream is on on both the iPhone and MBP. That should get them transfered. Right? She has the iPhone 6S set to "Optimize iPhone Storage". I assume that will put high resolution copies of the photos on iCloud (and then on the MBP, as it stores high res photos).

Should I turn off iCloud on the iPhone 6S until the MBP is finished uploading? The MBP started out with 15,527 photos and 772 videos (some very big videos) and now is stalled at 1442 items to upload. I assume an item is either a photo or a video (and a video being many photos). The iPhone is uploading and has about 1600 items to go. I see progress there, but not with the MBP.

Lots of questions, still trying to understand this stuff. Thanks so much for your helpful replies. I know that there are a lot of us who really appreciate your help!

Vee

Both seem to be trying to upload at the same time. Is this why it is taking so long for the MBP to complete (it's been uploading for over four weeks)? Will the photos be duplicated on iCloud? Or, does it check for duplicates?

When Photos uploads libraries from different devices to iCloud Photo Library it is checking for duplicates. It will prevent exact duplicates from being loaded twice, if it recognizes the duplicate. This comparison will take a long time.

In many cases of a very slow upload the reason were photos or videos in a format that cannot be uploaded to iCloud. Photos is wasting too much time trying to upload and comparing items that are not eligible for iCloud. What does your Smart Album with the rule "Photo cannot upload to iCloud Photo Library" show? Are there any incompatible items?

Leonie,

Thanks for your reply. I keep checking the Smart Album and there is nothing in it. I set it up just as you suggested a while ago.

My upload from the MBP to iCloud seems to be stuck. It has not moved one item for the past four hours. We have seen bursts of activity where several GBytes of data will upload. Then it will sit and not move even one item for hours and hours. It sets a "goal" of how many GBytes of data are left to upload. Several hours later it will hit that goal and then keeps uploading. But it always slows down when it hits the goal and then the goal disappears and it very slowly, if at all, continues to upload.

Maybe the problem is that it is seeing duplicates and it takes a long time to check them against photos already on the iCloud?? Not sure if there is anything we can do about that, is there? She probably has around 5000 photos and lots of videos that are on both the iPhone and MBP.

Another problem is that there are some very big videos that were loaded form a Sony Video Camera to her MBP a couple of years ago. Some are 30 minutes long. at 30 frames per second, that is a lot of photos in each video. That could be 54,000 photos. They were recorded in HD resolution. I'm not sure what the resolution of each frame is, but it could be a huge number.

It is confusing that it measures upload in terms of items. I assume an item is either a photo or a video. So one video item could be thousands of photos.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks

Vee

The videos count as one item, even if each video is several GB large.