Photos library no longer updates since upgrading from Sierra to Mojave

[Marla13]

I'm having a real problem with my Photos library-it's on an external hard drive (always has been). It was working fine ( and as expected) when my OS was Sierra, but since I upgraded to Mojave, the library just doesn't update. It says it is updating-but no new photos/videos appear/download from the cloud.

Last week I decided to test things out a bit and create a brand new Systems Library in Photos, and I had a different set of problems. A download began, and my photos between 2016-2020 (as an example) downloaded, but it seemed to get "stuck" & no further photos/videos downloaded...I left the drive connected for *days* and still...nothing. I don't know if the problem is with Mojave, or Photos.

I did speak to Apple and asked the very helpful advisor if I should upgrade to Catalina-he said no. My existing internal HD is not big and an upgrade to Catalina would mean I may run out of storage space. He did say I could do a back-up of my drive, and then wipe it clean and then restore/upgrade to Catalina on a fresh new drive-but this seems such a big task and one I am not keen to do if I can avoid it.

I feel reassured that iCloud has all of my photos, as does my iPad Photos App, but something is not right with my Macbook Air Photos library-and this is only since upgrading to Mojave. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
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[Brian33]

Unfortunately I don't have any great ideas about fixing your problem, but i would recommend you NOT upgrade to Catalina. Lots of people have reported various troubles with Catalina and IMHO it would not be likely to fix your problem. Mojave is generally considered more stable, I believe.

I would have thought that creating the new Photos library and downloading would have solved the problem. Can you tell if it got "stuck" at about the date you did the Mojave upgrade, or at some other point? I'm wondering if the sync is stuck on a particular photo or video, or if it's truly tied to the precise moment of your Mojave upgrade.

If it were me, I would make sure I had a good backup of as many of the photos as possible, before tinkering any more. iCloud Photo Library is great but I don't trust it with the only copies of valuable data like my photos! Then I'd probably try logging out of iCloud, and back in again. Maybe create a new user account on the Mac and (after logging the old account out of iCloud) log the new user account into my Apple ID/iCloud. Some problems are related to preferences or settings specific to a user account, and this is one way to find out.

 

[Marla13]

Hi Brian-thanks a million for your thorough and thoughtful reply! And for the reassurance *not* to upgrade to Catalina.
It's hard for me to know *where* the stuck point was and whether it coincided with the date I upgraded to Catalina-that is re-the *new* system library that I created. But, I have some news-I decided to revert back to my former system library (it had more photos on it)-in other words, it was more complete than the new one-the former one *did* get stuck on the same day that I upgraded to Mojave...however, it is currently "uploading" over 100,000 photos-so I'm just leaving it to do it's thing and then hoping it downloads all photos taken since 10th May-when I upgraded to Mojave. It might take a few days but I will update you here when I have any more info. I decided to revert to my former library because as above, it is more complete (though still doesn't include photos/videos taken since 10th May). Just to add: I tested out whether I can 'drag' a photo from my desktop to my library-and "yes" is the answer-it shows up in the Photos library. The issue I am having is that none of the photos/videos taken on my iphone since 10th May-have "sync'd" to my Photos library on my external drive...connected to my Macbook Air. I know for certain there is no issue with the drive itself. I am convinced this is an OS problem. Will update you when I have news.

 

[Brian33]

If I understand correctly, new photos you take on your iPhone don't show up on your Mac but do show up on your iPad. And, photos you drag into your Mac's Photos Library do (?) show up on your iPhone and iPad. Interesting syncing problem.

I had a very similar problem syncing my Contacts between my iPhone and three Macs -- they synced correctly in some directions but not in others between the devices. I was able to fix the syncing problem by removing certain files on my non-syncing Mac. Apparently the files were involved in keeping the syncing state and were out of date or otherwise incorrect on that particular Mac. Unfortunately Photos does not keep the same kind if files in the same place (I checked on my machine).

Hopefully after all the uploading Photos will download the remainder and be in sync again. I'd be curious to hear how it turns out. Crossing my fingers for you!

 

[Marla13]

Hi Brian-thanks for the above-yes, you have the correct understanding. I'm pleased for you that you were able to resolve your Contacts issue.

By the looks of how quickly (more like "slowly") this process is taking, I may not have any news until next week. It's taking a very long time to upload, so I'm just sitting right, getting on with other things and will wait and see what happens. Will update you here when I have something to update. Thanks for crossing you fingers-every little bit helps.

 

[Marla13]

Hi Brian. I hope you are well? So, Photos finally finished "uploading"...it then went into "updating" & as I feared might be the case=it has *not* started downloading my missing photos (between 11th May-today)-10th May is when I updated my OS on my Mac from Sierra to Mojave. Ever since then my Photos library has not been downloading from iCloud. Not sure what to do.

 

[Marla13]

Just to add: someone from the Apple forums had replied to me end of June with:

"After a system upgrade things, that worked before, may no longer work. For example, the Mojave upgrade introduced new security measures; that is why some older volumes are no longer compatible with Photos. And iCloud Photos does no longer update over a cellular hotspot.

Have you checked the external volume with Disk Utility? You may want to make a hardware check.
If the volume dismounts itself occasionally, the iCloud download may never finish".

I subsequently followed up with the Q: "When you wrote: "For example, the Mojave upgrade introduced new security measures; that is why some older volumes are no longer compatible with Photos"...what "volumes" are you referring to? Did you mean OS "version" or the volume of an external hard drive"?

I still haven't had a response so I have no idea what "volume" she is referring to. However, I did run Disk Utility on my external drive (the one that contains my Photos library) & I got the following message:

Just to clarify-I am trying to keep my original library rather than create a new one, only because when I started the "create new library" process last week or the week before I noticed that my Albums were not downloading from iCloud and I started to panic. I don't want to have to reorganise all of my photos into albums. I have *a lot* of albums under "My Albums" in iCloud, and these albums also appear in my existing/current Photos library. The problem with the existing Photos library is that it is not downloading any photos/videos taken since 11th May. And that is when I made the move from Sierra to Mojave. Coincidence? What do you make of the Apple forum's message above?

 

[Brian33]

Hi Maria!

When that person says:

the Mojave upgrade introduced new security measures; that is why some older volumes are no longer compatible with Photos

...the part about incompatible volumes doesn't sound right to me. Sierra did not support Apple's new filesystem (APFS) and Mojave does, but Mojave still works with all the older filesystems, too. I don't think that's the problem.

I'd forgotten that your library was on an external drive, though. Perhaps Photos is unable to write to the drive. Can you verify that you are able to create new files and/or folders on the external drive?

I don't mean within the Photos library itself -- we don't want to modify that. Instead, use Finder to go to whatever folder contains the Photos ".photoslibrary" file. (This might be the root (top level) of the drive, or maybe not.) Once in that place, use File-->New Folder to create a new folder (call it anything). Does that work?

If yes at least that tells us the drive is not mounted read-only and your user has permissions to create files. You can delete the new folder.

Ahh, this gives me an idea -- the issue could be one of file permissions on the external volume. When one uses Migration Assistant to migrate user accounts (or manually creates new user accounts) there is a possibility of a user account being denied access to files on an external volume. If that's what's happening it's pretty easy to fix; I'll explain how later if that turns out to be the case here.

When you performed your upgrade, did you use Migration Assistant to copy over the existing user accounts, or did you purposely create any new user accounts? There are several ways of performing the OS upgrade and I'm wondering which way you did it:

a) Used the App Store in Sierra to download and run the Mojave installer application (typical). This installs Mojave "on top of" Sierra, keeping the user accounts exactly the same.

b) Formatted (erased, wiped) the Sierra installation and re-installed a whole new OS with Mojave. If the boot disk was formatted, the you'd have to re-create the user accounts. You'd need to either manually set up user accounts again and restore data from a backup, or use Migration Assistant to do that process.

Also, we should know whether the drive (technically, the volume) is set to ignore filesystem permissions:

1. Select the drive on your desktop
2. Right-click and select "Get Info", which will open a little window
3. Look at the very bottom of the window (scroll if necessary) for a Checkbox titled "Ignore ownership on this volume".
4. Is that box checked, or unchecked?

If my hunch is correct, it's UNchecked right now and file system permissions are relevant. If it's been checked the whole time we'll have to come up with some other hypothesis... : )

However, I did run Disk Utility on my external drive (the one that contains my Photos library) & I got the following message:

The message is probably because the external volume is being used by some process. First, make sure Photos is not running. Then right-click external drive icon on your desktop and pick "Eject". It should eject. Then you could try the Disk Utility First Aid on the volume again.

Sorry about the long message, hope you can wade through it ok!

 

[Marla13]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for such a thorough reply. So, in reverse order:

1) The box "ignore ownership on this volume" is unchecked; the Apple support person on the Apple forum actually advised:

"If you want to repair the volume, restart the Mac, so the volume is no longer in use by Photos.

The try the repair again.

If it is not possible to set the "Ignore Ownership" flag as described in Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support,, the external disk is not compatible".

The box had been "unticked" but after reading her post, I ticked it. However it is now unticked and I believe it always was.

2) I performed the upgrade to Mojave via a) rather than b).

3) I created a new folder on my external drive, created and saved a Word doc to it and it all seems to be fine. I am quite confident my external drive is working; I spoke to Apple yesterday and he seems to think I just didn't leave my drive connected long enough for it to download all photos from iCloud. He said given I created a new systems library and then reverted back to my original...this may take the cloud a while to understand...i.e., which library I want it to recognise and work with. I'm inclined to wait and see.....rather than keep switching and creating new test libraries.

I will update you in a few days but for now I think I need to leave it to do what it needs to do.

Best wishes and thank you so much for all of your input....it's really very much appreciated!
Marla