Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iCloud Photos Sync Issue

ijordano

ijordano

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 9, 2017
228
331
I'm having an issue with iCloud photos on my 17 pro and I'm hoping collective knowledge can solve it, here's the deal -

I have my phone set to download originals with iCloud Photo Library, but since I got the new phone its been stuck on the same number, "Downloading 41,925 photos" and it doesn't budge at all, everything is there to view just not downloaded to the phone. I've tried a few restarts and pausing/starting etc to get it it going again but it won't move. Finally I turned off iCloud photos sync altogether and told it to remove everything from the phone, however 1965 files remain, a mix of photos and videos, dating randomly from now back to 2010.

My question is - when this phone exclusively has pictures on it that came from iCloud, because it is new, why have almost 2000 remained on the phone after turning off iCloud Photos? It can't be that they haven't synced, because they came to this phone FROM iCloud, and everything appears normal on my other devices. I could delete them all but im concerned that when I eventually turn on iCloud Photos again, it will sync the deletion with the cloud library.
 
  • Like
Reactions: palemonkey and iambrethless
Same issue here after restoring from iCloud on my 17 Pro. Stuck at downloading originals with no movement.

Oddly wife’s 17 had no issues downloading all originals.
 
Hi,
having the same issue. I am trying to select them in groups and do export originals but doesnt seem to fix the issue (besides being extremely slow). Did you find any fix? I do have plenty storage on my phone so that's not the problem.
 
i am also having an issue with downloading from a shared folder on icloud to my phones drive. It will slowly make progress and then i get an error message saying there is a network connection (my connection is fine)
 
I have no specific insight into this latest issue, but in the past, with iCloud sync issues, this often helped:
  • Go to Settings > [Your Name] and scroll to the bottom to Sign Out.
  • Sign back into your Apple ID to reset sync permissions.
It would not hurt to reboot between signing out and back in.
 
hobowankenobi said:
I have no specific insight into this latest issue, but in the past, with iCloud sync issues, this often helped:
  • Go to Settings > [Your Name] and scroll to the bottom to Sign Out.
  • Sign back into your Apple ID to reset sync permissions.
It would not hurt to reboot between signing out and back in.
Click to expand...
thanks for this. I will give it a try. Do you know if signing in and out alters other settings like apple pay or affects stored data in any way?
 
iambrethless said:
thanks for this. I will give it a try. Do you know if signing in and out alters other settings like apple pay or affects stored data in any way?
Click to expand...
Yes, it will remove your cards from Apple Pay. For other things like contacts, notes, reminders, messages, passwords, etc., it'll ask you if you want to remove them from your device or keep a copy. It'll also affect other things like continuity and app data from third-party apps that use iCloud.

I haven't done this, so I can't comment on the experience, but it does seem like a lot of data is being messed with for one problem. Who knows if it would end up introducing more issues. If you have an Apple Watch, you may impact that as well since a lot of those things are synced through your phone. Personally, I would just wipe the phone and start over if it came to that.

You can view the full list here:

Sign out of iCloud on your devices - Apple Support

If you want to stop using iCloud on one of your devices, learn how to sign out and what happens when you sign out.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

ijordano said:
I could delete them all but im concerned that when I eventually turn on iCloud Photos again, it will sync the deletion with the cloud library.
Click to expand...
I don't know if you've tried this yet; but if it were to end up syncing the deletion, they should theoretically go into 'Recently Deleted' and you can restore them from there. Could also try toggling Optimize Photos off and on, and leave your phone connected to power.
 
Thanks for your reply. I figured that out and eventually decided to not proceed. What I am doing is forcing the export in blocks of 1000. Seems to be partially working but it is a royal pain. I believe something must have been messed up when switching phones. I did try to turn off an on photos, it didnt sync the deletion luckily.
 
BigBlur said:
Personally, I would just wipe the phone and start over if it came to that.
Click to expand...

I actually ended up doing this. Erased the my phone and restored from iCloud which fixed the issue. All photos and videos downloaded over night while plugged in and charging.
 
You are probably right but I have just finished setting all my cards, banking apps, not to mention the watch. I am eventually managing by trying to export 5,000 pics at the time and then abort it. It’s working, slowly but working… Better than setting up everything from scratch (at least for me). Leaving this comment just in case anyone has the same issue an is looking for alternatives
 
  • Like
Reactions: palemonkey
Same issue here. Currently stuck at 33,000+ remaining with no movement.

Tried leaving overnight, toggling the optimize/original setting.
 
After forcing the export on several batches of 5,000 pictures at the time, my syncing started normally and it finished by itself. My guess is that there was something stuck that prevented the entire process from moving forward.
Hopefully this works for you as well because restoring the entire phone is even more painful, possibly. Good luck!
 
  • Like
Reactions: palemonkey
iambrethless said:
After forcing the export on several batches of 5,000 pictures at the time, my syncing started normally and it finished by itself. My guess is that there was something stuck that prevented the entire process from moving forward.
Hopefully this works for you as well because restoring the entire phone is even more painful, possibly. Good luck!
Click to expand...
Thanks. I’ll give that a go. Are you selecting one photo and then holding down to scroll till 5000 are selected?
 
iambrethless said:
thanks for this. I will give it a try. Do you know if signing in and out alters other settings like apple pay or affects stored data in any way?
Click to expand...
Here's Apple's latest info:

Sign out of iCloud on your devices - Apple Support

If you want to stop using iCloud on one of your devices, learn how to sign out and what happens when you sign out.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

Anybody worried about any possible data loss would be wise to verify that everything else in question is up-to-date on the server via the browser login, before proceeding:

iCloud

Log in to iCloud to access your photos, mail, notes, documents and more. Sign in with your Apple Account or create a new account to start using Apple services.
www.icloud.com www.icloud.com

Logging out and back in on the device should cause a re-sync, so everything should update to match what is on the iCloud web portal.


The downside could be that by starting over...partial transfers would be lost, so...should it hang again on the second sync...it might be a waste of time compared to forcing blocks to sync manually as outlined above. OTOH, if the re-sync works, it could just mow through the entire data set with no manual work.
 
iambrethless said:
Yes. Just maybe try first with 2-3000 pics and increase if you see it doesn’t crash. Once the download is over, just don’t finish the export and you should be good
Click to expand...
I’ve force downloaded about 10,000 but I’m finding that if I send a photo via iMessage the recipient is unable to view the photo. Are you experiencing that?
 
What I did was select pictures, export unmodified originals. This will prompt the download. If while it’s doing that you go to settings, your name, iCloud, photos, you should see under status that the number is decreasing and pictures are syncing as they download
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back