iCloud photo library stuck uploading

Question

Level 1

30 points

iCloud photo library stuck uploading

My Photos upload to iCloud Photo Library stopped about two weeks ago. It states at the bottom: "19 731 Photos, 1 389 Videos, Uploading 21 707 items". The last one hasn't change since the problem first occurred. Sometimes the whole disappears and I can see "Restoring...". Anyone has any idea how to make it work again?

- iPhone 6S+ 128 GB, 15 GB free space. Photos make up 34 GB on the device itself. Photos on iCloud make up 112 GB.

- iOS 9.3.4.

- Yes, I did read the similar threads. Nothing there suggested seems to be working.

- I checked iCloud.com, the new photos are not there.

- Yes, I do have a strong internet connection (15 Mbps upload), and it works perfectly. I even tried other wifi connection in several different locations.

- I did restarting the app, reboot, hard reset, switching off/on photo stream, iCloud photo library, logged out/in from iCloud several times, delete recently deleted photos, made some favourites, even deleted the last photo which is not uploaded. Nothing seems to be working.

- Shared folders do work.

- Google Photos app upload works perfectly.

- There is no other problems with any other iCloud service.

- I have the 1 TB iCloud storage started about a year ago, approx. 78% is free.

- Photos app background activity drains 28% of the whole, but not one new photo is uploaded. I can't even switch this off.

Posted on Aug 14, 2016 9:49 AM

Reply

Answer 1

MacAttac

Level 1

8 points

Jun 30, 2017 11:41 AM in response to balazs288

There is a setting to select your own contacts card in Siri settings. That should fix Siri not knowing who you are. It sounds like you have a cloud accounts issue. Do you have multiple cloud accounts on your phone (e.g. Google, Microsoft etc) in addition to iCloud?

Reply

Answer 2

scarpie

Level 1

9 points

Nov 8, 2017 5:51 PM in response to zinacef

Yeah why is this uploading to iCloud such a process? It’s 2017 isn’t there enough technology to zip photos/videos/documents into the cloud without all the time and devices freezing etc. My laptop seems like it’s gonna burst from so many restarts after fans get all hyper from all this uploading mayhem. THEN even after looking up many tutorial links and being on chat support thinking all is well, all my devices have iCloud activated yet my latest photos are still not syncing! And photos I take on iPhone are not showing up in MAC Photos.

F—ing lame, why did Apple discontinue iPhotos in the first place??? Have never liked Photos in general and now this iCloud BS is killing me!

Reply

Answer 3

scarpie

Level 1

9 points

Nov 8, 2017 5:55 PM in response to scarpie

So sick of seeing the colored ball spin and spin and having to power down so much cause I can t even bring up the force quit menu. Jesus H Crap

Reply

Answer 4

zinacef

Level 10

88,407 points

Aug 14, 2016 8:19 PM in response to balazs288

Sounds like you tried all of the troubleshoot points except maybe contacting Apple Support (bottom of this page).

Reply

Answer 5

balazs288 Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 15, 2016 9:00 AM in response to zinacef

I tried it, they promised me a call back, after spending more than one hour on the phone, doing all the typical troubleshooting stuff what I've already done, but no solution.

Any other ideas? Anyone experienced similar problems?

Reply

Answer 6

balazs288 Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 16, 2016 9:26 AM in response to balazs288

It gets even weirder. About 20 of the missing photos are now on iCloud, but about 500 is still not there. It does not seems to be updating, at least no new photos has been uploaded in the last 3-4 hours.

Also I had to sign back to Keychain, but even though I received the text message (sometimes with 5 minute lag...), and typed it in, iPhone (iCloud?) couldn't finish it, without any reason.

What the ..... is wrong with you Apple? Is it really that hard to provide the (not cheap) service you promised?

Apple Support is not patient. They called me, I wasn't available, they sent me an email, that they're available 30 more minutes. Should I call them again, or wait? Any experience?

In the meantime, I'm begging you, please if you have any hint, how to fix this, please do share with me.

Reply

Answer 7

zinacef

Level 10

88,407 points

Aug 16, 2016 9:54 AM in response to balazs288

If you have a large photo/video library to upload it will take a couple days to maybe even some weeks. When I was uploading over 8000 photos and videos to iCloud, it took me a couple weeks and slowed down my internet.

Reply

Answer 8

balazs288 Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 16, 2016 10:39 AM in response to zinacef

I only have about 500 photos, the rest is already uploaded to iCloud during the recent years. Also, now it stopped again. I expect this kind of service not only faster, and more accurate, but consistent. This is something I've never experienced either from Google, or Dropbox. The most likely is, that Apple's servers just can't keep up the pace of the new phones and photos.

Reply

Answer 9

zinacef

Level 10

88,407 points

Aug 16, 2016 1:50 PM in response to balazs288

Try the download, perhaps, at night when there's not so much traffic on your network.

Reply

Answer 10

balazs288 Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 17, 2016 2:12 AM in response to zinacef

Yes, the phone is on wifi, opened Photos app and plugged in. The network is very fast, as mentioned above. No change regardless.

Reply

Answer 11

balazs288 Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 17, 2016 11:33 PM in response to balazs288

Some news.

I'm in contact with the Apple Support, we've talked for 3 times already. Now it's at the engineering team. They say, that I should make a copy of everything, before they do anything, but it seems impossible, as Apple doesn't have anything like Google Takeout. Saving manually would take months. 😟

They also suggested to upload to iCloud.com directly from my Mac. It said it's uploaded, but doesn't show there or any device. So it must be an iCloud problem.

In the meantime Siri forgot everything about me, she says she doesn't know who I am (and my girlfriend, sister, father etc.), which worked perfectly until yesterday.

Still any help would be appreciated.

Reply