iCloud iCloud is so SLOW at bulk upload of photos

[Ketsjap]

I'm trying to upload a photo library (300+ GB, over 57.000 items) from my Mac to iCloud. I purchased 2TB iCloud for it. Goal is to have all my pictures on all my iCloud-enabled devices.

But the process is SLOW. Painfully slow. It takes about 10 minutes to upload about.... 50 pictures? Is this normal?

My upload speed is a steady 20 mbit/s. That's not the issue.

I've read about iCloud throttling bulk-uploads, so they don't overload the servers. I've also read that the process doesn't only upload the files, but also checks for duplicates, and that might also take some time.

But at this speed, it will take weeks!

Does anyone have any similar experiences?

 

[adamlbiscuit]

Yep, it's been the same for me the whole time I've used iCloud Photos. However, after the initial bulk upload, it's a lot less painful as it just uploads pictures as-and-when they're added.

A couple of things you can try:

1. If you're using a MacBook make sure that it's plugged in. Sometimes the computer will pause iCloud uploads to preserve battery life.
2. Ensure there are no other intensive network-related processes taking place - e.g. updating of iCloud Music Libraries, uploads/downloads from iCloud Drive, downloads from the Mac App Store etc. - the system will often prioritise certain actions over iCloud Photos which can slow things down a bit.
3. When you're not using the Mac, leave it plugged in/switched on. As a temporary measure you might want to stop the computer from sleeping automatically in Energy Saver preferences. Also, when the computer is being left idle, keep Photos in the foreground as the 'active' app. Sometimes if the app is left in the background the system activates 'App Nap' which is essentially where the system pauses the app to stop it from taking up resources behind the scenes.

 

[micnguyen0]

Yep, unfortunately it is. I was never subscribed to iCloud to about 2 months ago when I had about 200GB of photos on my phone. When I subscribed to iCloud, it took me -forever- to upload. Multiple times I thought either my phone was messed up, or my iCloud was in a stuck state. But finally after maybe 1-2 months of continually having my phone connected, on wifi and locked - one day everything just worked. Now all my photos upload instantly after that initial huge batch.

I almost lost all hope to be frank with you - but I guess the moral of the story is, just trust that it will work and just be very, very patient. It's annoying I know.

 

[ssspinball]

Yes, that is normal for a 300+ GB library. Probably the single worst thing about iCloud Photos is the initial upload struggle. It's pretty great once it's up and running.

The worst part is Apple provides such little feedback that many will assume something is broken after zero progress in multiple hours. If it must stay so severely throttled, then it would be a whole lot easier to be patient if it was clear to the user that it was not broken when it's busy/waiting.

 

[400]

For various reasons I have had to move my library a few times recently and each time I have to re dedicate it as a system library. Photos was already in the cloud synced with my local library and keeping originals on my Mac and whilst the same pictures and library have only moved hard drive, it took well over four days to re sync with the cloud (40,000 items, 700gb or so).

I assume that there is a lot more going on than just uploading, I ran console in the background with search on "photo" and whilst I don't understand what is going on on the console messages, there is a lot of going on in the background.

Decided to dump the spinning HD and go for a nvme soon, it will be interesting to see what that is like but hopefully the last time I shift it (the library that is).

"Caffienate" is a useful command for terminal I found.

 

[AL2TEACH]

I'm curious but what happens if something goes wrong with iCloud? the photos? are backups only in the cloud or also on HD?

 

[TheMountainLife]

Somewhat related I was pretty annoyed that I was trying to iMessage family some photos/videos I took over Thanksgiving and it forced me to sync to iCloud first. Took several hours to upload a 362mb file but it sent the link before it was ready so everyone kept asking why they couldn't play it. Back in like 2017 I recall sending like a 1GB video I took on a GoPro over iMessage with no problem.

I've been leaning on G Photos more and more mainly due to the fast sync and can actually see if its making progress.

 

[400]

I'm curious but what happens if something goes wrong with iCloud? the photos? are backups only in the cloud or also on HD?

Two settings I think. One downloads all originals to the Mac, if you have storage, the other setting will just give you thumbnails and download if required (a certain amount will be managed on the device). If cloud messes up, I don't know if it will distribute all the pain from a corrupted database?

My library is backed up many times using download originals to the Mac and Photos program works to that drive. But I have never seen iCloud as a backup. Just a way to conveniently work across many devices. Hence I back up a lot, and then some.

 

[DA23Gam]

I've been in the process of uploading a video file to iCloud for the past 4 days. The iPhone is fully charged or otherwise plugged in. My network speed is 45Mb/s but it just sits there saying 'uploading 1 item'.
Since I started I've transferred (as a test) similarly sized files to & from Dropbox in less than ten minutes.
A couple of months ago I purchased extra iCloud storage but now I wonder why I bothered.
This thread has been live since November 17th but as yet we've seen no solutions or explanations as why iCloud is broken &/or when it will be fixed. Not best pleased.

 

[micnguyen0]

I've been in the process of uploading a video file to iCloud for the past 4 days. The iPhone is fully charged or otherwise plugged in. My network speed is 45Mb/s but it just sits there saying 'uploading 1 item'.
Since I started I've transferred (as a test) similarly sized files to & from Dropbox in less than ten minutes.
A couple of months ago I purchased extra iCloud storage but now I wonder why I bothered.
This thread has been live since November 17th but as yet we've seen no solutions or explanations as why iCloud is broken &/or when it will be fixed. Not best pleased.

How big is your video file?

 

[DA23Gam]

How big is your video file?

Just under 1GB.

 

[Christoffee]

Just under 1GB.

I did my big upload this weekend - 15,000 photos and videos at about 250GB. I have a handful of 1GB plus videos and they went up.

Have you tried the Plex shuffle? Or maybe there is something about the file that iCloud doesn’t like - maybe remuxing or reencoding it to see if that cheers up iCloud.