iCloud Photo Library does not work with High Sierra.

Did you check, if Photos clandestinely activated the "Optimize Storage" option? I found this option enabled, after the upgrade to High Sierra.

To force Photos to download all photos quickly, I created a few slideshows with 10000 photos each, and played them with "preview Slideshow" during the night. This forced Photos to download all photos from iCloud.

I also have exactly the same problem :/

Unfortunately resetting my router or connecting through ethernet to the router worked.

Everything works fine on the same Mac in Sierra and El Capitan?

Edit: After a few minutes while connected on ethernet all the pictures started to appear 😀

Exactly the same happened to me on my MBA but before updating to high sierra - spoke with Apple who said initially just to wait, then said I should update to high sierra when I said that the iMac was updating in real-time, even though I was and still am running sierra 10.12.6 on it.

This made things much worse: keynote, numbers and pages would not update either after this so I lost instant access to hundreds of documents as well. The finder also went tits, finding stuff but in no particular order, if that makes sense.

I don't know what was going on but I can tell you what I found and how I fixed it, or at least got things working again....

I thought I'd try a clean install of an earlier OS as the MBA is a couple of years old, but I couldn't get anything except high sierra, only to notice I couldn't erase the disk and partition with anything other than APFS, so I'm guessing I must have ticked a box somewhere to change the file system when I installed 10.13. Does this have anything to do with what happened? I only ask because I waited five days for photos to change from "uploading 244 photos" to "uploading 241 photos" out of about 4000, when usually it's within a minute that changes occur, and I keep high-res originals as there's loads of memory to play with.

Anyway, not really knowing what I'm doing I put it into target disk mode, connected with a TB cable then used my iMac to erase it with Disk utility and format in Mac OS extended (I have two backup SSDs just in case, wouldn't be the first time I've destroyed everything including the rescue partition). Then downloaded sierra 10.12.6 from Apple via a third-party website, set up as new, signed into iCloud, tunes etc. and everything back to normal - documents and photos came back within an hour or two!

Sorry if I've posed more questions than answered, might be of interest to someone. Or perhaps not.

I just hang up the phone with Apple support. I had to restart my computer and press ALT CMD P R. No change.

We tried to add a photo in the photo library. The picture loaded, but the download remained blocked.

The technician hopes that it will unlock in the night. But I do not believe it.

I tried to explain to him the manipulation done by Joe Sixpack, but he did not think that was the solution.

I also explained to him that everything worked very well on Sierra. For him, it is not High Sierra that is the problem.

I also explained that I was not the only one to have this problem and go see on the Apple forum. No result...

I am desperate.

Same problem for me on 2012 Mac Mini with 850 EVO 1TB SSD.

Shared albums, works fine but IPL just hangs on "Updating X items" for days.

I've tried rebooting the router/modem and switching between Lan and wifi. Nothing

I haven't gone so far as to try sharing the internet connection from another mac as I'm having trouble believing it's the only possible solution. I'm hoping 13.1 will rectify.

I should point out that I've got two laptops running HS and IPL is working fine for both of them. The only thing I can imagine is that it's something to do with the after market SSD in the Mini and the transition to APFS?

Don't think it's the SSD, my iMac runs Sierra from a thunderbolt enclosure and there's never been an issue with anything, apart from having to select the external drive as boot disk after an OS update - and it was the only computer I have that worked with photos, the MBA stopped and High Sierra caused more problems thereafter.

Not sure it's APFS either, I'm not clever enough but I imagined there might be a conflict with iCloud as I had two computers running different OS (never been an issue before but the file system has been the same until HS came with APFS) until I went back to Sierra on the MBA (I'll try HS when I'm more confident) . It seems this may have affected my situation but the filing system on the computers only manipulates data locally, from what little I know, so not so sure this is the case, someone with more in-depth knowledge might give a definitive answer I'm sure.

Just out of interest, when I had keychain issues in the past I logged everything out of iCloud including iPhone and then back on again after restarts, starting with the computer that had a complete and functional keychain, then the other devices once it finished. I did similar after I reinstalled Sierra last week with the photos glitch except the other devices already had complete iCloud libraries, iCloud does weird very well sometimes...

I believe you will find that the answer is patience - a couple of hours is not enough to download 2300 photos and the new photos will not download until the earlier download is complete

LN

I partitioned the drive and did clean installs of Sierra (HFS+) and High Sierra (APFS). I did not migrate anything from any other system.

None of your Photos Libraries has been restored from Time Machine? A photos Library can no longer be restored correctly with Time Machine, if the library has been on an external drive.

Hello Joe

I have tested your trick. It work !! That’s weird indeed.

I have a phone call with an Apple adviser tomorrow and i will notice if I have something new about this problem

Have a nice day

Olivier