iCloud photo library won't sync to Mac

Jakub, where is the Photos Library on the iMac stored? Is it in her Pictures folder or on an external drive? Check this page: Where is it safe to store a Photos Library? Requirements for the external drive

Which version of MacOS X is running on the Mac?

When you sync a Photos Library from a Mac, it will first upload all photos from the Mac to iCloud and only then start downloading to the Mac. Does she have enough free iCloud storage, so all photos from the Mac can upload to iCloud?

And what is the status of the syncing? Has the Mac already finished uploading, or is it hanging somewhere? Check this page: Check the status of your library in Photos for macOS - Apple Support

Even after disabling all Shared/iCloud features and then re-enabling

This triggered a new total upload of yoru Photos library to verify integerity and wakes days or even weeks

what is your ICPL status on each dvice - Check the status of your library in Photos for macOS - Apple Support

to help we need the answers to our questions otherwise we are only making wild guesses - an with zero information form you except that you triggered a new total upload my guess is that the upload is not yet complete and noting downloads until the upload is complete

LN

Shared albums are using a different iCloud service as iCloud Photo Library - it is free service, that does not count against your iCloud storage. That is why you are having upload limits to shared albums, and they will occasionally stop syncing for some until, if you are hitting an hourly or daily limit, see: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202299

if you hit a limit you just need to wait a bit to able to upload again.

This worked for me:

1. On your Mac, quit the Photos app.
2. Launch the Activity Monitor app, which is located under Utilities in the Applications folder.
3. In Activity Monitor, search for “photos” in the upper-right to filter through the list of running processes.
4. There should be a few rows left on the screen. For “Photos Agent” and each of the ones starting with “com.apple” click on the row to select it, and then click the X icon in the upper-left.
5. A confirmation message will appear. Click “Force Quit” to end the process.
6. Once all of the processes mentioned in step 4 are gone, you can quit Activity Monitor.
7. Open the Photos app again and, after a few moments, all of your latest photos should start importing from My Photo Stream.

I'm having the same problem that started in late August 2017. All photos were syncing across devices (iphone, ipad and mac) perfectly for the past few years. Now it just all of a sudden stopped syncing across devices. No idea what's going on.

Is it perhaps with the impending release of MacOS 10.13 High Sierra?

LN,

Thanks for the reply. This still wouldn't explain why sync just stopped working only in MacOS Photos (on 2 separate machines) and not in iOS devices.

What occurred was that the 'Activity' Shared feed just stopped updating on both a 2016 iMac and 2014 Macbook Pro. Even after disabling all Shared/iCloud features and then re-enabling, the Activity feed isn't syncing properly.

The status check yielded that everything was synced in my Photos Library.

After looking into the issue further it was only a syncing issue with my Shared Albums. I disabled everything in the iCloud settings tab (which removed all photos) I can now confirm that this fixed my Shared Folder syncing issue. It took a bit of time for everything to sync back up, but it appears it's working again.

For clarification, my shared album/folder syncing had been working perfectly for quite some time, but it was within the last 2 weeks that the shared folder syncing just randomly stopped working on both of my MacOS devices (both running latest OS version 10.12.6).

Hmm...limits do not explain why it continued to work in iOS, but not sync on desktop software in MacOS.

Additionally, we're talking about a max of 2-3 photos / day with most likely scenario being about 5 photos / week to one shared folder.

jakudo,

I did not need to delete the photo library. I just needed to reset the iCloud sync by unselecting all in the preferences and then re-selecting. Yes, it did take quite some time to have them all load again, but thankfully i'm on a gigabit connection.

Not me...

I haven't been able to even so much as IMPORT my iPhone images onto my Mac since Nov 20th.

My Photos Library file takes up about 140gb going back to 2009, and HD storage is not an issue. I have that file on another 4tb drive in my Pro but there's still 200gb remaining on that drive.

I'm on the 200gb plan for iCloud. Is this seriously needed to upgrade to 2tb?? Is that what this ploy is?

In Photos on Mac it reads my iPhone - but NO new photos to import since Nov. 20.

Remember the days when Apple was the go-to for streamline because it simply WORKED?

I'm having exacty the same problem as jakudo since a couple of months... Everything updated to latest versions but simply my Mac won't upload from iCloud while iPhone (6S) and iPad (Air2) work perfectly with iCloud Photo's.

Worked fine for years but now sync to Mac stopped.

Apple, please solve this problem!

Dear Jakudo, Thanks for the message!

Yes, same thing came up in my mind when I was out of ideas two months ago... I made a backup on an external disk (just in case...) and the deleted everything and made a new library. Photos started uploading the photos from iCloud and end of the dy everything was working fine again.

Now I’m stuck in the same position again so tried the same (as you describe), but this time after creating a new library Photos says it is uploading all my photos from iCloud but nothing happens (I know it might take a while) so in the end I decided to restore my old library (from backup) so at least I can look at my photos.

Starnge thing is, that phots from my iPhne or iPad work fine, no problems at all, it is just the High Sierra on my iMac that does not want to cooperate.

We might have to wait for Apple guys to wake up and solve this issue...

Called Apple Support yesterday. Since seemed to be iCloud related they helped me (iMac out of warranty).

Problem solved! After sending photo to my iCloud Drive this seemed to trigger something that made Photos synch again.

Also check that you have no VPN activated, this seems to block synchronisation sometimes I found out.