Why don't my photos download from iCloud to my Macbook?

Question

Level 1

11 points

Why don't my photos download from iCloud to my Macbook?

Does anybody know why my photos don't download from iCloud to my Macbook? I am using Photos and occasionally the photos decide to download but, most of the time, I just get a light grey box where the photo should be but no photo. The photos are available in iCloud but I shouldn't have to go into that and individually download each image; it should leave the high resolution photos on the cloud and give me a 'copy' on my Mac. I've got a decent Internet connection and everything is turned on in Preferences.

Thank you for any of your suggestions.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Apr 28, 2016 12:00 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

194,653 points

Apr 28, 2016 3:43 AM in response to Fratemate

There may be aproblem with one of the photos that will not download. Download one of the photos that do not appear in your Photos library from the web interface and check the format. Is there something different from the other photos?

Are there photos in your library that your Mac cannot upload? These photos nay be blocking the download.

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Answer 2

Fratemate Author

Level 1

11 points

Apr 29, 2016 6:50 AM in response to léonie

Thank you for your reply and advice. I did try your solution but didn't have any luck so I tried the age-old trick of all super genius computer nerds; yes, I powered down the machine and then started it all up again afresh. Guess what? Yep, it worked. I literally clicked on Photos and the iCloud stuff was instantly available. I don't know what went wrong but I'm guessing that it got itself stuck in some kind of loop that paralysed the operation. It obviously 'knew' there was stuff available on iCloud since it presented the light grey boxes in Photos but it just refused to download the actual photographs. Anyhow, it is now up-to-date and my photos are available on my iCloud, my Macbook and my iPhone (as they should be). So I will say 'thank you' again and will lurk again......until the next time 🙂

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