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I am uploading photos to iCloud from Photos on my iMac. The status bar gets to "uploading 8543 items" and does not go any further. My photo library has 9212 photos and 245 videos.
I have switched on iCloud in the preferences option in the photos app on the iMac.
My aim is to sync ICloud with my iPhone12 and iMac computer.
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15
Hi
It's not frozen. It just takes a long time, and very often doesn't update the progress indication.
Your library is about 50% bigger than mine when I first synced it. Mine took 48 hours full time. So if yours goes at the same speed, then you can expect it to take 72 hours. Could be longer, could be shorter, but don't panic until nearly a week has gone with nothing happening. And leave the mac on 24/7 with the photos app open. You can get on with using photos, or do other things while it is syncing.
Hi
It's not frozen. It just takes a long time, and very often doesn't update the progress indication.
Your library is about 50% bigger than mine when I first synced it. Mine took 48 hours full time. So if yours goes at the same speed, then you can expect it to take 72 hours. Could be longer, could be shorter, but don't panic until nearly a week has gone with nothing happening. And leave the mac on 24/7 with the photos app open. You can get on with using photos, or do other things while it is syncing.
I was able to speed things up by using an ethernet cable . It still took another 12 hours for the 'uploading to finish' . Another 12 hours and the updating is continuing but at least I can now see the photos appearing in iCloud. However , I have not yet seen images downloaded from iCloud into the iMac photos library.
I am also hoping that albums and associated photos will sync . So far I can see some albums have synced but they are currently empty.
Thanks again for getting back to me. It nice to know that I'm not alone in this task/ challenge/ Alice down the rabbit hole adventure :)
Thanks Tony. It would be great if there was something else besides the status bar to indicate that the process of uploading was still active. It does seem to move but then gets stuck on an number. Is that what you were seeing?
yes, that is exactly what I was seeing. In fact it stopped updating for a long period, and when I woke up the next morning it had just completed overnight.
And I agree that the speed and progress notification of iCloud sync is very unsatisfactory. It is mystifying why they can't provide an esitmated % complete, and estimated time to completion.
You can check the progress on your iCloud web page, if you like. Have a look at www.icloud.com in Safari on your Mac and open the Photos.app there. You can see there, which photos are already in iCloud.
Sometimes incompatible media in your Photos Library can be blocking the upload. Are there any items in the status bar below "All Photos" shown as "Unable to upload" or "On this Mac only"?
Thanks Leonie,
I did check the status of the upload by logging into iCloud Photos but could not see any change. The photos from Photos in iMac were not appearing. After four days and transferring to an ethernet cable the status bar changed from 'uploading' to 'updating'. 'Updating' has not yet finished but I can now see photos appearing in iCloud, so I can see that something is happening. I hope to have all photos and albums synced once 'updating' has completed. Fingers crossed + prayer hands :)
All is good now. Photos AND Albums have synced on all devices : Phone, iCloud and iMac.
Excellent - thanks for letting us know.
How can I get photos on iMac to upload to iCloud without freezing?
