Have you noticed faster iCloud Photos loading times?

[zach-coleman]

One of my largest complaints about the entire ecosystem experience is how slow iCloud Photos can be, and this has been the case for a few years. I have nearly 1 gigabit WiFi, and constantly have had jpeg photos take 10+ seconds to load from iCloud.

I even developed an app 2 months ago related to photos and found the loading speeds from iCloud to be so compromised it was almost unworkable.

However, this morning I noticed that the photos seem to be loading significantly faster than normal. I spent a while tapping onto random photos in my library and they all loaded (including Live Photo) in like <3s. Has anyone else noticed this?

For what it’s worth, I have been on the 26 beta all summer, but this behavior also occurred on iOS 18 and 17 for me.

—

My library size is 286GB across 36,008 items. I only use the optimize setting on all my devices as none of them have enough space to hold this.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Definitely a significant boost in speed as of recently. (Casted a Yes Vote). I'm very happy with what it is doing now. Usually I never even think about it because by the time I need the photos they're available (albeit slower than industry). As you know, I had a bad day in late August with a normal amount of photos (took an entire day to upload for some reason). And yeah, last weekend, I took a crazy amount of photos/videos and BOOM instantly available (and I was on slow cable internet at parent's house). Haha.

Hopefully this continues Definitely significantly faster.

 

[dannyyankou]

Yes, it’s fast. One of the reasons I usually get a higher capacity iPhone is because I like to download all the photos offline, because of the loading times. But if this is the new normal, maybe I can justify just getting the base 256gb. Apple Music streaming does use a lot of battery though. I like to download music offline too.

 

[zach-coleman]

Yes, it’s fast. One of the reasons I usually get a higher capacity iPhone is because I like to download all the photos offline, because of the loading times. But if this is the new normal, maybe I can justify just getting the base 256gb. Apple Music streaming does use a lot of battery though. I like to download music offline too.

I’m worried this is just them temporarily dedicating more servers to deal with the traffic of everybody getting a new phone tomorrow and having to download from iCloud. 🙁

 

[rui no onna]

I’m worried this is just them temporarily dedicating more servers to deal with the traffic of everybody getting a new phone tomorrow and having to download from iCloud. 🙁

Seems like that might be the case.

My 17 Pro was just stuck not downloading originals for the past few days so I toggled iCloud Photos after I got home today. There's progress now but it's super super slow. I only have 45GB but at the rate it's going, it doesn't seem like it'll finish by tomorrow.

 

[zach-coleman]

I feel like it's back to being slow too now.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I feel like it's back to being slow too now.

Yeah it's ... slower now. I took about 6 pictures and drove home (12 minutes) and even after 30 mins it had only uploaded 3 to iCloud and was "syncing"... (despite being on 1GBPS fiber optic) lol

And they're not RAW or anything - HEIC...