Photos uploading library again after restoring Mac from backup

This discussion is more than a year old. The behavior of uploading again has not changed.

The only difference is now, that Apple included a warning into some some support documents, so we now know that a new upload of the library is the expected behavior: See the footnote at the end of this document: Fix missing or incorrect thumbnails in Photos - Apple Support

Repairing the library will result in a new upload, but also simply turning iCloud Photo Library off and on again - there are quite a few situations resulting in a new upload: Why is iCloud uploading my entire iCloud Photo library again after I moved its location?

Avoid these situations, in particular, do not disable iCloud Photo Library, if you have less free iCloud Storage than the size of your iCloud Photo Library. You will not be able to turn on iCloud Photo Library again without purchasing more iCloud storage.

Since your problem has nothing to do with this thread (which is about restoring from a backup) you are much more likely to get good answers if you start your own thread and include specific details about your different problem on your different system - see Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question for help in asking a question

LN

Its good to differentiate between as designed behavior versus desired behavior. My experience with the behavior was after completing a data migration to a new MacBook. I opened Photos to change the setting from "download all photos" to "optimize storage" because the new Macbook had a much smaller SSD than the one I had migrated the data from.

Based on my observation of Photo's behavior, which did not change after I changed the setting, it's going to complete uploading all of the photos before it honors the new setting and deletes the majority of the photos to optimized storage.

For me , the ideal behavior would be to not upload the files. failing that, I'd like it to react to the fact the I changed the settings, and only maintain / verify photos according to the "optimize for storage" settings.

The ideal behaviour would try to save as much bandwidth as possible.

But the first priority would be to have a better documentation about the upload behavior of Photos, so we will know the consequences of our actions when we are working with our Photos Library and can avoid expensive actions.

I just encountered the same thing after restoring my Mac from a backup. The responses here supported what I had guessed, which is that it's not really uploading, it's comparing and matching, so the use of the word "uploading" is confusing and inaccurate. My iCloud photo library is still intact, as I can see from looking at my iCloud storage and from accessing my photos using my iPhone and iPad. I did my last backup an hour before the restore, so there are no new photos that need to be uploaded. It seems to me that iCloud photo library should be able to match the photos on my computer with the ones stored in the cloud faster than the rate of about 10 GB an hour.

It would have helped me if the message in Photos had said "uploading *or matching* x number of items". My first response was that it had deleted the photos already stored iCloud and was starting the entire upload process all over again. I know it's a background process, but depending on when I check Activity Monitor, there are between 4 and 6 processes with the word "photo" and they're all at the top of the list of apps using the CPU.

I'll be glad when it's done.

I keep getting this same problem and I am not restoring or switching drives. It is disappointing because I have 200GB in just photos so it takes it a week to restore. The only thing I could think of is I have my iphoto DB on an external drive but I have not moved it since the beginning. Anyone have any thoughts?

Bad choice of words "Uploading". Dropbox use the word "Syncing" so no one complains about this when they restore a hard drive. I monitored my traffic during the process and no way it was uploading the photos. Since Photos on the Cloud is the master copy it must be comparing to make sure that all the photos on the Mac are in fact in the Cloud.

I'm also having this issue.

I had 50gb I cloud storage, 30gb photos uploaded.

My internal drive was getting full so I move the photo library to an external SSD and pointed apple photos to it by holding command and launching photos .

Now it wants to "upload" all the photos again and to top it off says I don't have enough cloud storage so won't do anything till I pay for more.

It should just checksum the files and check that!

To compare alternatives , before using apple photos I just had my photos in an organised directory structure on disk . I mirrored this to my Amazon prime photos account using its WebDAV access. Using good sync.

For the same 30gb of photos it takes 5 minutes to check them all after I moved them to external drive.

Sort it out apple.

Welcome to the Apple Community.

You'll need to let it complete, the more you pause the longer it will take. As you say it's checking for duplicates, it won't actually start adding the photos a second time, but it may take a while to complete.

Photos will upload the library again, for several reasons, if you copy the Photos Library to a different drive, if you restore the library from a backup, or if you simply repair the library.

You can see what kind of upload and download is being done in the Console window, but not the names of the image files:

Open the Console.app (it is in Applications > Utilities). The Console will show you, what iCloud is doing. Type "cloudphotosd" into the search field:

When the library is uploaded again, I am mostly seeing entries of duplicate checks. Like Winston Churchill stated, this will usually not result in duplicates being added, but it can result in plenty of network traffic.

The "Duplicate detection" messages will look like this in the Console window:

I'm experiencing the same thing. I had to replace my hard drive so I had to restore onto a new drive. Now iCloud Photo Library is uploading my whole library again.

I hope that is not what it is actually doing. It seems insane to upload them all (100GB worth) just to check if they are duplicates. Surely there is a better way with checksums on the image or something? All this because of a restore??

It is just comparing to make sure everything is uploaded.

Eric, I wish Apple would document more precisely, what Photos is actually doing, when we are seeing the "uploading" message after we restored a library, moved it to a different drive, or repaired the library.

So far, I only have found one support document, that mentions this new upload - see the last sentence:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205069

Note: If you use iCloud Photo Library with Photos, this action will cause Photos to re-upload all your pictures.

"This action" is referring to repairing the library. And "cause photos to re-upload all your Pictures" is rather daunting.

Have you come across more documentation on how the upload to compare a library to iCloud is working? I'd be grateful for any links.

Sorry léonie, I haven't had any luck finding documentation either.

Side note - I hope you are feeling better and are back home.