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Anyone else having iCloud Photo Library syncing problems in Catalina?

S

SW3029

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 22, 2019
523
2,644
After installing Catalina my iCloud preferences had iCloud Photo Library disabled for some reason. I turned it back on and I got warnings that my photo library might be too big to upload–despite my photo library already being uploaded. Anyway, I just let it do its thing and iCloud seemed to figure out my entire Photos Library didn't need to be uploaded again.

However, now when I open the Photos app I see a message at the bottom of the app saying "Upload Failed for 228 Items." The 228 photos have been moved to a special album in the sidebar called "Unable to Upload."

I then followed the instructions under "If you can't upload photos from your Mac" that Apple suggests here. However, I still can't get the photos to upload.

This has been going on for days.

Anyone else having this problem? Is it a bug with Photos, Catalina, or iCloud?
 
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My preferences were disabled but seemed to put itself right after leaving it be. The issue I’ve had with photos is different I have my photo albums organised by years and events, these are now inexplicably jumbled up. I’m not sure whether to leave Catalina and see if it reorganises itself, otherwise it’s a manual painstaking task to move each album back into the order they were previously. Lot of other issues with Catalina, such as parallels v15 crashing, I also had the setting up Mac issue. Had a Mac for 15 or so years, this is by far the worst transition to a new OS.
 
SW3029 said:
After installing Catalina my iCloud preferences had iCloud Photo Library disabled for some reason. I turned it back on and I got warnings that my photo library might be too big to upload–despite my photo library already being uploaded. Anyway, I just let it do its thing and iCloud seemed to figure out my entire Photos Library didn't need to be uploaded again.

However, now when I open the Photos app I see a message at the bottom of the app saying "Upload Failed for 228 Items." The 228 photos have been moved to a special album in the sidebar called "Unable to Upload."

I then followed the instructions under "If you can't upload photos from your Mac" that Apple suggests here. However, I still can't get the photos to upload.

This has been going on for days.

Anyone else having this problem? Is it a bug with Photos, Catalina, or iCloud?
Click to expand...
I’m having the identical problem. My photos won’t sync. Photos tries to upload all 13,500 of my pics to iCloud but either stalls or fails like you. Every other symptom you’re describing, I have as well. I’ve tried all sorts of things, but nothing works. I’m at a loss.

I think the problem stems from iCloud. I’ve had all sorts of weird iCloud things happens since upgrade. Keychains not syncing, user logins in a loop, iCloud Drive stalled, telling me it has to form iCloud “recovered” folders.

This release is a dumpster fire, and never should have been allowed in the wild. Pretty sure I’ll have to downgrade back to Mojave.
 
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I am facing a count error in Catalina 10.15.2. Photos on the web shows 8600 photos and 264 videos. Photos on Mac and iPhone both show 8604 photos and 264 videos.

Tried removing the photo library on the Mac and on creating the new library, it is still downloading 8604. Any idea?
 
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There are hundreds of messages on the Apple community forums about this. I spent 2 months with Tech support trying to sort and every time we thought it was sorted it stopped syncing with iCloud. I have given up as believe it’s not something that can be fixed by us.

Many on the forum have emailed TC directly and a few have had responses saying they are looking at it urgently.

I tried going back to Mojave but it no longer recognised my library as the latest version is a new version of Photos.

I pay for iCloud to protect my photos and so I can share across devices. iOS works well. Catalina is broke, Apple are taking to long to fix sadly.
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If you go into iCloud on the web it shows the photos are there, Catalina just can’t sync them.
 
I am currently downloading all originals to the Mac. Will then proceed to remove all photos from iCloud and re-upload. Will see if that solves it.
 
bwfc0907 said:
Tried this without success, not all photos downloaded. This needs a story writing as the impact is huge.
Click to expand...

Yep, I have 8604 photos on the Mac now, versus 8600 on iCloud. I have no clue about which files are not getting shown on iCloud.
 
Most likely related, I turned off icloud syncing in end due to cloudsyncd repeatedly going crazy and starting to use up cpu and write unfathomable amounts to ssd, presumably just stuck in some loop.. several times I caught it after having already written over 1TB data overnight!
 
iMacDragon said:
Most likely related, I turned off icloud syncing in end due to cloudsyncd repeatedly going crazy and starting to use up cpu and write unfathomable amounts to ssd, presumably just stuck in some loop.. several times I caught it after having already written over 1TB data overnight!
Click to expand...
The new Photos app should never have been released in this state and to not have even fixed by now is extremely poor.

The whole of the photos app could/should have been delayed if not ready.

I just wish Macrumors would do an article on it to bring it into view.
 
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