iPhone iCloud Original Photos Not Downloading

[subaiku]

Hi guys, I'm having a similar issue. I'm on an iPhone 6, iOS10.3 so I guess it's not just an iOS13 issue. I noticed I couldn't access some of my photos via third party apps sometime early this week, further found that it was because the originals wouldn't download.. I have optimize photos on.
Checking on icloud via browser, I found the last 2 weeks photos hadn't been synced up.. then I checked my phone and saw that there were 700+ photos left to upload. That was last night.

This morning I checked again and now says it's got 79k photos to go.. (I've got over 82k photos) What the **** is going on??
The 'share/email' method also doesn't work for me..

 

[vvapple]

I think I have a problems that is somehow caused by this same problem.

My iPhone XS takes incredibly long to find people (faces) in photos and even though it says it’s done with curating the photos, I believe it is not. I have no idea how far it is now with faces / people since there is no progress bar, but my Mac says it must be 105 faces to identify, my phone only has 97 so far and is still working on it for a couple of weeks now. I already stopped the whole process once to reset (DFU) the phone and recreate it from an backup - that certainly didn’t help.

Any idea what’s going wrong here?

 

[Blue Hawk]

I have downgraded from iOS 13.2 to 13.1.3 yesterday and my photos are all downloaded over night. Seems like this is fixed or it’s working for some people and for some not.

 

[tor_2]

I think I have a problems that is somehow caused by this same problem.

My iPhone XS takes incredibly long to find people (faces) in photos and even though it says it’s done with curating the photos, I believe it is not. I have no idea how far it is now with faces / people since there is no progress bar, but my Mac says it must be 105 faces to identify, my phone only has 97 so far and is still working on it for a couple of weeks now. I already stopped the whole process once to reset (DFU) the phone and recreate it from an backup - that certainly didn’t help.

Any idea what’s going wrong here?

I am facing the same issue. I have 12k photos and it’s been more than a month analysing faces. I let it charging over night and every night less than 100 photos are analysed. I am looking for ways to speed up the problem, but I have find nothing .

 

[vvapple]

I am facing the same issue. I have 12k photos and it’s been more than a month analysing faces. I let it charging over night and every night less than 100 photos are analysed. I am looking for ways to speed up the problem, but I have find nothing .

Thanks for your answer. I really don't know what is causing that.. very strange! It can certainly not be my internet connection since its a 200k connection and my Mac analyzed all photos without an issue. So it must be an iOS thing, I just hope its not the A12 Chip that's broken. Can someone report that bug to apple?

 

[tor_2]

I don’t think there is an issue with your chip, I think there is an issue with iCloud or with the way iOS manages faces recognition.

 

[john991]

I don’t think there is an issue with your chip, I think there is an issue with iCloud or with the way iOS manages faces recognition.

I believe your correct. I have photos that take for ever to recognize on my Mac. iOS just do a good job at recognizing anything new to existing faces. Pretty much gave up trying.

 

[vvapple]

I believe your correct. I have photos that take for ever to recognize on my Mac. iOS just do a good job at recognizing anything new to existing faces. Pretty much gave up trying.

For me its just that the Mac works fine, iPhone doesn't

 

[john991]

For me its just that the Mac works fine, iPhone doesn't

Mines the exact opposite.

 

[ssimonvii]

I am facing the same issue. I have 12k photos and it’s been more than a month analysing faces. I let it charging over night and every night less than 100 photos are analysed. I am looking for ways to speed up the problem, but I have find nothing .

I mentioned this to senior support and their engineers told them it was "expected behavior". I received no response after doing the math and telling them it would take 572 years to finish scanning faces at this rate. That engineer should be fired.

 

[Kreichle]

Ok so I just created an account to tell everyone what I did. Not sure if it’s what started the downloads again but here ya go.

I just went into settings for iCloud Photo Library and spam pressed the “Download and Keep Originals” setting even though it was already checked. Right now as I was typing this message the downloads froze again. I just spammed the download original setting and it started right up again!

I went from stuck at 2200 photos to download for the last 4 hours to 1000 to download in the last 15 minutes.

I hope this helps and is not just a coincidence.

 

[bricktop_at]

For me it started working normally once I switched from XR to 11 Pro Max. Why it works now is beyond me.... but maybe it had something to do with signing in with a new device. The XR never finished the downloads, no matter what I tried

 

[4492865]

Yesterday I erased my iPad and reinstalled it, and it downloaded 26K photos in their original form within 24 hours. Stark contrast in September when I got the new iPhone, which took over 2 weeks.

I wonder whether this is due to the heavy load on iCloud when everyone gets a new phone?

 

[Megapickle]

Question about copying photos to a PC when “Optimize iPhone Storage” is ON...

If you plug you iPhone into a PC, open the iPhone’s folder and copy the photos to the PC, are you copying the original photos? Or just thumbnails?

Note: I’m talking about copying photos without using iTunes or iCloud for Windows. This is just straight drag-n-drop from the iPhone folder.

 

[subaiku]

Hi guys, I'm having a similar issue. I'm on an iPhone 6, iOS10.3 so I guess it's not just an iOS13 issue. I noticed I couldn't access some of my photos via third party apps sometime early this week, further found that it was because the originals wouldn't download.. I have optimize photos on.
Checking on icloud via browser, I found the last 2 weeks photos hadn't been synced up.. then I checked my phone and saw that there were 700+ photos left to upload. That was last night.

This morning I checked again and now says it's got 79k photos to go.. (I've got over 82k photos) What the **** is going on??
The 'share/email' method also doesn't work for me..

Ok, just an update from me. All over 80k of my photos were uploaded over the night and everything seems to be working fine again.

 

[yoomsters]

Ok so I just created an account to tell everyone what I did. Not sure if it’s what started the downloads again but here ya go.

I just went into settings for iCloud Photo Library and spam pressed the “Download and Keep Originals” setting even though it was already checked. Right now as I was typing this message the downloads froze again. I just spammed the download original setting and it started right up again!

I went from stuck at 2200 photos to download for the last 4 hours to 1000 to download in the last 15 minutes.

I hope this helps and is not just a coincidence.

I took a wild shot and tried this and after an 8 hour work day of being stuck at 37k, and couple extra spam taps, i got down to 14k ish in 4 hours. but then i left the work wifi and was stuck at 14k till i spam tapped this morning at the office but i've been stuck at 11k left to download. really hoping something kick starts this again but y'all should try the spam tap!

 

[trubluku]

Ok so I just created an account to tell everyone what I did. Not sure if it’s what started the downloads again but here ya go.

I just went into settings for iCloud Photo Library and spam pressed the “Download and Keep Originals” setting even though it was already checked. Right now as I was typing this message the downloads froze again. I just spammed the download original setting and it started right up again!

I went from stuck at 2200 photos to download for the last 4 hours to 1000 to download in the last 15 minutes.

I hope this helps and is not just a coincidence.

Thanks for this suggestion. It cleared up the ~475 originals that it had been trying to download for 4 weeks.
I suspect they were downloaded the entire time, but flipping this setting back-and-forth synced things up.

 

[thewhitehart]

Ok so I just created an account to tell everyone what I did. Not sure if it’s what started the downloads again but here ya go.

I just went into settings for iCloud Photo Library and spam pressed the “Download and Keep Originals” setting even though it was already checked. Right now as I was typing this message the downloads froze again. I just spammed the download original setting and it started right up again!

I went from stuck at 2200 photos to download for the last 4 hours to 1000 to download in the last 15 minutes.

I hope this helps and is not just a coincidence.

Awesome advice! The ”spam press” technique is surprisingly successful!

 

[Fattytail]

Thanks for this suggestion. It cleared up the ~475 originals that it had been trying to download for 4 weeks.
I suspect they were downloaded the entire time, but flipping this setting back-and-forth synced things up.

This is pretty funny, but just to clarify: are you just tapping the "Download Originals to this Mac" button constantly? Or are you flipping between that button and the "Optimize Mac Storage" button?

 

[slyronit]

Bought a 512Gb iPad Pro 12.9” yesterday. Didn’t download a single photo all night and all day today. Flashed IPSW and started from scratch again, still stuck.

The iPad Pro 11” I bought 2 weeks ago was able to finish everything in 1 night.