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Downloading Originals iCloud Photo Library Stuck

Ok managed to fix mine!

1. Select all -> Play Slideshow. Wait for them all to download. Gets stuck with 122 left.
2. Go to deleted photos and permanently delete what is left in there.
3. Close photos.app with Cmd+Q
4. Open it from Applications folder while holding down Option+Cmd and double clicking it
5. Tell it to repair the library
6. Hangs for about 10 minutes sending stuff back and forth to iCloud

Now I have this!

1704032877027.png
 
I’m trying to avoid the manual forcing of syncing the library. Has anyone else seen more movement recently? I still am stuck with only about 10% of my low res previews showing, let alone the originals. Have tried wiping the machine and starting fresh again, no dice. It’s as if the system is not even trying to download the files, there’s no nsurlsessiond or cloudd movement at all.
 
Tried repairing the library. Tried turning off iCloud Photos and shared albums, rebooting, and turning them back on. Tried booting into safe mode. Tried exporting to the downloads folder. Nothing at all is working. Have spent all night messing with this. It's going to drive me nuts when some engineer from Apple gets back from holiday break tomorrow and flips some switch on the iCloud server side and it all just starts working again lol.
 
I have been monitoring mine since it started working again and it seems to continue to work. I checked this morning and all the photos we took yesterday and added to the shared library have downloaded. I did notice a few times where there were not downloaded but I waited and the next time I checked all was synced. This is definitely something that seems to start and stop but not as bad as it was a few weeks ago where it just didn’t work.
 
So yesterday evening it just… started working. Nothing I did, Photos wasn’t even open. Just saw the system was starting to exchange 5-10MB/s and realized looking at the processes that it decided to start loading my library.

This morning, all 24k photo originals are downloaded and iCloud is synced.

There must have been some problem on the server end that they were probably slow to address due to to holidays.
 
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Fast forward 11 months to Dec 2024. I'm having the exact same problem. Found this thread via Googling
mac photos libary "downloading originals" slow.
This is after several weeks of battling this thing. I've already seen the same info in the 50 posts on this thread in different forms, here and there on the web, but this thread does a great job of pinning all the potential workarounds in one place.


The advice here to "Export originals" is what has finally worked for me:
1734044243266.png

The magic words in blue. OMG what a relief.


It didn't even take that long! Apple Photos might suck at some things, but it does not suck at exporting photos. I was able to queue up 12 parallel exports (1000 to 50000 photos each) within 20 minutes.
1734044339591.png



The results are still landing on my external SSD but everything looks good.
1734044371479.png



Important part is that the export process seems to have been enough to nudge the iCloud sync into finally completing!


Here are the steps I took:


  1. New MacBook Air account "Fotos", with Administrator privs
  2. Sign into the new "Fotos" Mac account.
  3. Sign that "Fotos" Mac account into my SAME old iCloud account.
  4. Start Photos.app, let a couple download. Then quit Photos.app.
  5. Plug in the shiny new external SSD (this cost more$ than I was originally willing to spend, now seems worth it)
  6. Move / Copy the newly created (small) Photoslibrary in ~fotos/Pictures to the external SSD
  7. Doubleclick that moved / copied PhotosLibrary to open Photos.app
  8. Settings -> "Use as System Library"
    1. When Prompted “are you sure, any photos not synced”… click Yes sure
  9. Settings -> "enable iCloud" and check "Download Originals to my Mac"
  10. Wait ~2h.
    1. Photos App should show "# of items" increasing quite quickly... these are initially thumbnails and database entries
    2. "Photos Library.photoslibrary" should grow in file size
  11. Select All + "File -> Play Slideshow"... that didn't work for me. Maybe too many photos.
  12. Wait 3+ days for “Downloading originals” to stop... it's still going... "Downloading 22 originals". For >12 hours.
  13. Tired of this. Started the “Photos Export Experiment”. Success. Results screenshotted above.

Progress graph of step 12 maybe TMI. The flat blue part in the upper right was what I was getting tired of watching not grow.
1734045352737.png



Anyways, thank you folks on this thread who posted all the helpful hints!
 
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