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Photos "uploading..." is stuck.

Installed Catalina, and now the Photos app is stuck on "Uploading 21,059 items"


In particular, it's not syncing the last couple weeks worth of new photos.


What is it doing? This "uploading" thing seems to be some sort of background process, but where are my most recent photos? Do I have to wait for it to do all this backlogging, which is taking forever, before it's going to simply show me my new photos? The new photos are available on my iPad and iPhone, just won't sync to iMac with Catalina.

iMac Pro, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 25, 2019 4:33 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 25, 2019 4:39 PM

I've tried everything under the sun for syncing issues. I'm experiencing the same thing you are. I downloaded my entire library from the cloud to my mac. There were 400 remaining items that the computer made no progress on for 4 days so I tried logging out and back in to iCloud. My, my computer and iCloud are syncing, the first step of which, it appears, is to check/"upload" all the originals on my mac vs what's in the cloud. One week in and about 15% done with the "upload" process.


Also, videos that played fine are now giving me "resource unavailable" as an error when i attempt playback in Photos.


Face scanning is about 80% complete. That happened over the course of a couple days but now zero new progress has been made on that.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 25, 2019 4:39 PM in response to bobtem

I've tried everything under the sun for syncing issues. I'm experiencing the same thing you are. I downloaded my entire library from the cloud to my mac. There were 400 remaining items that the computer made no progress on for 4 days so I tried logging out and back in to iCloud. My, my computer and iCloud are syncing, the first step of which, it appears, is to check/"upload" all the originals on my mac vs what's in the cloud. One week in and about 15% done with the "upload" process.


Also, videos that played fine are now giving me "resource unavailable" as an error when i attempt playback in Photos.


Face scanning is about 80% complete. That happened over the course of a couple days but now zero new progress has been made on that.

Dec 17, 2019 9:07 PM in response to E lop

Same problem here. Downloaded a lot of photos in iOS while on vacation, and now the Mac is stalled trying to pull them back. Initially also got "resource unavailable" message, but now just hangs. Tried moving the photo library to an external ssd in case of space issues, and then switching it back to being the system library. Still stuck...

Photos "uploading..." is stuck.

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