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iCloud Photo Library does not work with High Sierra.

I installed a new SSD drive in a Mac Pro 2009 (with 2010 firmware). I partitioned the drive and did clean installs of Sierra (HFS+) and High Sierra (APFS). I did not migrate anything from any other system.


On both partitions I enabled System Preference > iCloud > Photos. I selected "iCloud Photo Library" and "Photo Sharing" in System Preferences > iCloud > Photos and in Photos > Preferences. I also selected "Download Originals to this Mac" in Photos > Preferences.


On both partitions, all shared albums instantly appeared in Photos, and Photos gave a count of all the images it had to download from iCloud.


On the High Sierra partition, Photos proceeded to download nothing, even after several hours. Not even low resolution images.
On the Sierra partition, Photos rapidly downloaded low resolution images, and then very slowly started downloading the high resolution versions.
I took a photo with my iPhone and another Photo with my iPad (The iPad is running the latest version of iOS 11. The iPhone is running the latest version of iOS 10. Both have iCloud Photo Library enabled). Both photos appeared on the iPhone, the iPad, an El Capitan Mac, and the Sierra partition. Nothing on the High Sierra partition.
I copied the incomplete photo library from the Sierra partition to the High Sierra partition. Photos gave me a message like "2,266 Photos, 16 Videos, Downloading 2153 Originals” and proceeded to download nothing until (after a couple hours) I tried selecting images one by one to force Photos to download high res versions.

Mac Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13), null

Posted on Oct 8, 2017 4:08 PM

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27 replies

Oct 24, 2017 4:09 PM in response to Joe Sixpack

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.

Oct 27, 2017 1:26 AM in response to Joe Sixpack

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?

Oct 27, 2017 6:24 AM in response to Steve James

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...

iCloud Photo Library does not work with High Sierra.

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