How to restart iCloud drive syncing

[ahostmadsen]

My iCloud drive on both my computers very often gets stuck syncing. If I restart the computer, the syncing then succeeds after restarting. But having to restart the computer just to get syncing restarted is very draconian. Is there another way, like killing some daemon in activity monitor that can restart iCloud syncing?

 

[ignatius345]

I wish I knew. This happens to me all the time. I'll just look and find iCloud is stuck for a long period of time, and there's no way to know if it's stuck on a particular file or what. Other times it works smoothly and very quickly.


For what it's worth, logging out of your user account and back in seems to also restart syncing, and is a bit quicker than a full restart.

I used to use Dropbox (before the software got bloated and intrusive) and it did have much better transparency about what it was doing. iCloud Drive is a total black box and it "just works"... until it doesn't.

 

[balph]

After being very frustrated with this problem for a long time and constantly rebooting to restart syncing I finally found the fix for this a while ago:

• Launch Activity Monitor;
• Search for processes called "bird" and kill them (sometimes there's just one, sometimes there are multiple);
• iCloud sync will now resume normally.

Of course it's completely ridiculous that Apple still can't get this working right after all these years, but at least this saves a lot of frustration, rebooting etc.

It does seem that this problem is occurring a little less often in Ventura than in previous versions of macOS, but it's still happening from time to time for me.

Edit:

killall bird

in the Terminal should also work and is a bit quicker.

 

[ahostmadsen]

After being very frustrated with this problem for a long time and constantly rebooting to restart syncing I finally found the fix for this a while ago:

• Launch Activity Monitor;
• Search for processes called "bird" and kill them (sometimes there's just one, sometimes there are multiple);
• iCloud sync will now resume normally.

Of course it's completely ridiculous that Apple still can't get this working right after all these years, but at least this saves a lot of frustration, rebooting etc.

It does seem that this problem is occurring a little less often in Ventura than in previous versions of macOS, but it's still happening from time to time for me.

Edit:

killall bird

in the Terminal should also work and is a bit quicker.

I tried it, but unfortunately it made no difference. Its still stuck.

 

[MrHatken]

Killing the bird(s) did work for me, many thanks!

I did have to wait a few minutes though for it to start scanning again, but then quickly folders caught up...
As you say, ridiculous that Apple doesn't have this perfected (or fixed in a point release).
DropBox, OneDrive,... have been doing it really well for a long time...

 

[balph]

Yes, iCloud Drive + Cryptomator was a really great solution for me, but the syncing issue was annoying. The bird killing solution was working but I just had to do it too often.

 

[ThrowerGB]

Apparently it's part of iCloud processes. There's a good discussion here.

 

[ignatius345]

Yes, iCloud Drive + Cryptomator was a really great solution for me, but the syncing issue was annoying. The bird killing solution was working but I just had to do it too often.

What is Cryptomator and how does it help iCloud Drive syncing?

 

[Coltaine]

What is Cryptomator and how does it help iCloud Drive syncing?

Cryptomator is an app that locally encrypts all the data you pass through it, before sending it to the Cloud. It does not help syncing iCloud Drive in any way. Theoretically, if you trust Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, you don't need it anymore. I used to use Boxcryptor, which is a similar program, until it was sold off to Dropbox last year.

 

[ignatius345]

Cryptomator is an app that locally encrypts all the data you pass through it, before sending it to the Cloud. It does not help syncing iCloud Drive in any way. Theoretically, if you trust Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, you don't need it anymore. I used to use Boxcryptor, which is a similar program, until it was sold off to Dropbox last year.

Interesting! I have gone so far as to make encrypted disk images for the most sensitive stuff in iCloud Drive (and Dropbox before that) -- and like to keep a copy of that same thing on a couple different cloud services at the same time. But the vast majority of sensitive stuff just goes into 1Password at this point. I think adding an encryption layer across all my icloud activity would probably just be overkill for me. I'm not journalist or anything, and I don't have any nation states or hacker collectives angry with me (I don't think??)