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My Photos app appears to be constantly uploading to iCloud Photo Library. It says it has 15,000+ items to upload (which is the size of my library), it hits 0, and then goes back to uploading them. It appears to be stuck in a loop and affecting the performance of my Mac. Any suggestions?
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)
Are you sure it says the same thing each time (uploading).
Then You might try the following...
Try repairing the library by holding down ⌥ and ⌘ while launching the app.
I've done that a few times now. It fixed a crashing issue I was having with the application, but it hasn't changed the constant uploading issue.
Is there anything unusual about your installation of photos, is it not on the computer HDD for example.
It's on the Mac's HDD. The only other HDD in use is an external one used for Time Machine backups.
It appears to be stuck in a loop and affecting the performance of my Mac. Any suggestions?
Have you searched your Photos Library for items that cannot upload to iCloud Photo Library ? Audio files, some video codecs, older image file formats, or high resolution TIFF files (with more than 8 bit).
photos and videos in an incompatible format could be blocking the upload forever.
You can test this with a smart album:
File > New Smart Album
and add a constraint: Any item
If the previous repair did not help, don't do it again. After each repair will Photos start over with uploading to iCloud Photo Library from the beginning.
Interestingly it came up with 51 items that are all blank. The metadata is there, but the images are not. I'm able to copy them to the Clipboard, but when I attempt to paste into a folder outside of Photos it says, "The items on the Clipboard can't be pasted to this location. One or more of the items may have been deleted or are no longer available." It's interesting that the metadata is still there. I suppose I could delete these bad file references, but they were once photos and I'd like to recover them if I can.
If I've run the repair process already does it sound like there's little chance of me recovering these images?
The metadata is there, but the images are not.
Photos is storing the metadata and edits separately from the original image. when you add image files to Photos, it will store the original image file either inside the Photos Library or reference it in its original location. in addition to this, Photos creates an edited version. This is a description of the edits to be applied and the metadata tags. Photos uses the version to compute the rendered image from the original. Apparently you are still having the version, but Photos cannot access the original.
Are the photos in question referenced?
I would inspect the folder where the missing image files should be. Select a photo that is not missing, but has been imported at the same day as a photo that is now missing. Copy the filename from the Info panel.
Now search with FindAnyFile for this filename.
Download Find Any File here: The trial is free:
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.html
FindAnyFile let's you find files inside library packages where Spotlight will not search.
This way you can look into the folder with the original Master image files. It is organized by the date the photos have been imported to Photos. If you can find the folder, where the photos should be, you can open Time Machine and go back in time to the time where the photos have still been there and try to restore them to a folder on your Desktop and reimport them.
Sometime the problem is, that the filenames have become corrupted. The files are still there, but the filenames cannot beread because of an incompatible filesystem , ethnic characters, or similar.
If I've run the repair process already does it sound like there's little chance of me recovering these images?
First check with FindAnyFile, if the files are really missing, or are just not recognized as the same files.
Sometimes the repair will succeed better, if you first repair the permissions for the library, then run the repiar.
I think those files are long gone. There were no originals in any of those master file folders in the package contents for the Photos library. I attempted to restore as far back as I could with Time Machine, but they weren't there either. I'm OK taking that loss.
Unfortunately though, removing the files/references that were "unable to upload" didn't solve my issue. It's still attempting to upload the entire library over and over again. iCloud shows all of the photos and videos so I don't think it should be doing this.
Maybe I need to wipe out the library and start fresh by downloading all of the originals from iCloud into a fresh library file.
Any more thoughts or advice is appreciated.
I created a new primary Photos Library, downloaded everything fresh from iCloud, and got rid of the bad Photos Library and that seemed to have solved my problem.
Photos iCloud Photo Library Uploading Constantly
