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iCloud Drive Files Stuck Uploading to iCloud

I'm having real trouble with iCloud drive on my Mac. Firstly, everything has the latest updates including Apple software and Office products.


I have used iCloud since it first came available and have a large number of files in the iCloud drive on my Mac. For as long as I can remember these have updated OK to iCloud whenever changes were made.


Now, I find that when files are added or amended in the iCloud Drive on my Mac, they start to upload to Cloud but get stuck in the upload process. The grey wheel at the side of iCloud Drive in Finder goes anywhere from 5% to 95% round, but never completes. Most of the time the grey wheel goes back to the beginning and tries again, but gets to the same point.


I have tried a number of things to fix this:

  1. Signing out of my Apple ID
  2. Signing out of iCloud
  3. Disabling iCloud Drive within System Preferences


The more radical things I tried were:

  1. Moving everything from iCloud Drive to a local drive, then deleting any leftovers (only empty folders) in iCloud and on all my iOS devices. After a reboot I tried moving some files back. The first couple went fine, and uploaded to iCloud, but then the old problem came back and any other moved files became stuck. After this, I moved the first files from iCloud drive to the local folder again, and tried to move them back to iCloud. Grey wheel stuck on these too.
  2. Finally, I read somewhere that Time Capsule could cause an issue (I can't remember where, and can't find it now). So I have disconnected wifi from the Time Capsule and connect instead direct to my router. I have also deleted Time Machine backups from the Capsule and started again from a brand new backup.


None of these have worked and I am not at a loss what to try next. At the moment I have all my files stored locally and backed up to Time Machine so they are safe, but I can't access them on any other devices - which sort of defeats the object!


Thanks for reading 🙂

iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Jul 3, 2017 4:18 AM

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Posted on Jul 10, 2017 9:11 AM

Finally got this resolved after some hours talking with Apple Support. It appears that it was a software issue. After trying lots of different things, the agent looked at my apps folder and suggested two for removal, which resolved the problem.

8 replies

Jul 6, 2017 12:20 AM in response to Brightone2

After 24 hours nothing much had changed. All except one had a small proportion of the file to upload. Comparing iCloud Drive on my Mac against iCloud in Safari, some files appeared in the Cloud while others didn't. However even those that appeared were still not 100% uploaded in Finder.


I've now taken everything out again, except the one that uploaded completely. I've then tried to add files one by one to iCloud drive. Each file would not upload completely. For example, a pdf file of 627KB was left with 31KB still to upload; an XLSX file of 78KB was left with 43KB. As it became clear that each file was not going to completely upload, I moved it back to a local drive, leaving iCloud with only one file.


Next I moved that one successful file out of iCloud to a local drive, and tried moving it back. It wouldn't upload. So I moved it out again and tried another. Same problem.


I'm now running out of options. Is it worth calling Apple Support?

Sep 3, 2017 1:55 PM in response to Brightone2

Stuck at "Uploading 16,152 items to iCloud". Been there for weeks.


Running <brctl log --wait --shorten> in Terminal shows this, repeated endlessly:


[debug 2017-09-03 13:48:26.852] bird

o continuing on <private>

[info 2017-09-03 13:48:26.880] bird

<private>: reply(<private>, (null), (null))


┗ end

[info 2017-09-03 13:48:26.881] bird

<private> (<unknown>) -[BRCXPCRegularIPCsClient getBookmarkDataForURL:onlyAllowItemKnowByServer:allowAccessByBundleID:reply:] <private>

[debug 2017-09-03 13:48:26.881] bird

[ dispatching to <private>


┗ end

[debug 2017-09-03 13:48:26.881] bird

o continuing on <private>

[info 2017-09-03 13:48:26.884] bird

<private>: reply(<private>, (null), (null))

┗ end

[info 2017-09-03 13:48:26.885] bird

<private> (<unknown>) -[BRCXPCRegularIPCsClient getBookmarkDataForURL:onlyAllowItemKnowByServer:allowAccessByBundleID:reply:] <private>

[debug 2017-09-03 13:48:26.885] bird

[ dispatching to <private>


┗ end

iCloud Drive Files Stuck Uploading to iCloud

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