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BigMcGuire

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jan 10, 2012
10,216
14,443
EDIT: Could not replicate this on a recent vacation weekend. Thus I believe this was more of a one time event. Sorry for my "rant" below.

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My iCloud has 61,959 photos and 1,932 videos in iCloud Photos (using since 2011). Local ISP is 1GBPS Fiber Optic that has no limits. iCloud Photos is only using 155.3GB. I use Google Photos as a backup.

Yesterday my partner and I went on a pelagic trip and took 71 photos and several handfuls of 4k videos (all under 1 minute (most under 30 seconds)).

After the trip, I plug my phone into my car and told it to sync my photos anyway on the 50+ min drive phone as I have unlimited Verizon Wireless data. (I do not limit cellular data - never have). Google Photos backed up everything within a few minutes (5G UW).

I get home and ... not one photo has synced to iCloud. Now I'm on wifi. I have dinner for an hour. Nothing has synced. So I also plug it into the wall figuring maybe it needs to be plugged in.

Spend 4+ more hours doing other things until bedtime. Only 23 photos have synced and - the entire time I get ready for bed, that number does not increase at all despite being on fiber optic 1GBS 100% reception wifi.

Wake up in the morning and find out that everything synced. Great - head to my Mac and... it is playing the 4k videos as if they're 720p 90s videos. Sometime in the past, my Mac OS Photos app turned on Optimize Storage - so I turn that back on (I never use optimize storage). At least Google Photos lets me view my videos in relative sharpness and share them with family.

Meanwhile, for the last SEVERAL hours on my Mac OS, I've watched my Photos app go from

1756573086867.jpeg


to

1756573098366.jpeg


on 1GBPS wifi (5ghz correctly configured). While writing this post went down 8 more. lol

It is almost 24 hours later and I still can't play my 4k videos on my Mac OS that I took yesterday despite paying for 2TB of iCloud Storage - having iCloud+ or Premier or whatever Apple calls it now.


Absolutely insane - I have never had it this bad... ever...
 
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Several hours later and:

1756579993283.jpeg


On a brighter note, 2 of my 4k videos from yesterday are available in 4k :). Rest are still... blurry messes.
 
So an update on this...

I took a large number of videos and photos over the last weekend ( was on vacation in Lake Tahoe and then visited family ) - and everything uploaded instantly and was available instantly in iCloud. I took some 4k 60fps videos as well.

Maybe I hit a bad day in August?
 
I am frustrated by this behavior all the time going back years. (To my admittedly slanted memory, it had gotten worse and worse with time.) It basically refuses to upload over cellular even if I go and tap for it to sync now. Very slow speeds as well, WiFi or cellular, battery or charger.

So an update on this...

I took a large number of videos and photos over the weekend ( was on vacation in Lake Tahoe and then visited family ) - and everything uploaded instantly and was available instantly in iCloud. I took some 4k 60fps videos as well.

Maybe I hit a bad day in August?
I just posted a thread about how the speed on iCloud Photos (download) seems to be much faster as of very recently. It’s interesting you experienced faster uploads too…
 
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