Photos does not download photos from iCloud

[ahostmadsen]

Basically, Photos is totally stalled downloading photos to my Mac. I need to outline the sequence of events
1. I enabled shared library with my wife
2. I realized it was then also downloading my wife's originals to my laptop, which there is no disk space for.
3. I disabled shared library (keeping only my own pictures). That worked online and on my i-devices, but the Mac was stuck downloading the pictures that there was no space for.
4. So, I disabled icloud photos on the Mac and deleted the library (emptying trash).
5. I created a new album, enabled icloud photos (download originals). After about a week it had downloaded 500 of 35,000 pictures.
6. Tried again: disable icloud photos, delete, new library. Now it's even worse: it's stuck halfway through 'restoring from icloud' for several days.

Any suggestions?

 

[capamac]

I stopped using photo cloud sync some years ago.

I just transfer photos manually when desired. No cloud.

I'm guessing Apple's just been ignoring this issue in the years since I stopped using it.

Apple's too busy with all their nonsense; they're just "adding more features" and "Liquid Glass!" and "Here's some more emoji" ... they don't have time for things like fixing bugs any more.

 

[Bigwaff]

After about a week it had downloaded 500 of 35,000 pictures.

If it's downloading full size originals, how many GB are your 35K photos? How fast is your internet connection? How often is your Mac sleeping. The iCloud photo sync process is a background process. It's designed to not consume your internet bandwidth. Plus, is disk filling up again? Just be patient.

 

[ignatius345]

Basically, Photos is totally stalled downloading photos to my Mac. I need to outline the sequence of events
1. I enabled shared library with my wife
2. I realized it was then also downloading my wife's originals to my laptop, which there is no disk space for.
3. I disabled shared library (keeping only my own pictures). That worked online and on my i-devices, but the Mac was stuck downloading the pictures that there was no space for.
4. So, I disabled icloud photos on the Mac and deleted the library (emptying trash).
5. I created a new album, enabled icloud photos (download originals). After about a week it had downloaded 500 of 35,000 pictures.
6. Tried again: disable icloud photos, delete, new library. Now it's even worse: it's stuck halfway through 'restoring from icloud' for several days.

Any suggestions?

Step 6 can take ages. IIRC the last time I got stuck in that same step, a restart eventually got things moving. But regardless, I’ve got a big library (over 55,000 photos and 7,000 videos) and the restore did take quite a few days ultimately.

On the whole I find iCloud Photos very much worthwhile. I’ve got access to all those photos and videos and they sync quite well between two Macs and an iPhone. I know there are ways to replicate that with a NAS, but I’m just not up for the maintenance, personally.

BTW, if you want to “fact check” what’s uploaded to iCloud, the iCloud.com website is a good place to check.