Photos taking forever to sync to iCloud

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Photos taking forever to sync to iCloud

I ran out of space on my Macbook Air and realized I had over 100gb of photos, so I upgraded my iCloud account and am trying to sync them. I've followed all the correct steps, but they are taking FOREVER to sync. Literally every time I'm on my computer in the past 3 weeks, I've left them syncing and only about 1,500 have synced to iCloud out of 20,000. 635 of those have gone into an "unable to upload" folder in Photos. How can I speed this up? What is wrong here?

Thanks!

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 2, 2021 6:30 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 2, 2021 8:09 PM in response to ccwoodward89

This will take some time for the size of library you have. For reference, my 50GB 5000 item library took a full 48 hours, and is not limited by your internet speed. You can expect around a full 96 hours +/- if it goes the same speed as mine) It is normal for the above not to update for long periods of time during the sync.

Leave your mac on 24/7 connected to power, and with the photos app open.

Bear in mind - if you want to save space on your mac, you will also have to check "optimise mac storage" in the icloud settings.

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Answer 2

ccwoodward89 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 2, 2021 8:17 PM in response to TonyCollinet

It's been going for a few weeks, whenever my computer is open. I've tried leaving the computer on overnight and plugged in and I changed the settings to not allow it to go to sleep, but it always goes to the screensaver after a period of time and seems to "sleep" anyways, thus stopping the back up. How do I prevent that from happening and allow it to keep backing up all night?

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Answer 3

Nov 3, 2021 12:33 AM in response to ccwoodward89

Yes, that behaviour is very annoying.

I use a little menubar app appropriately called caffeine.

https://www.intelliscapesolutions.com/apps/caffeine/releasenotes

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Photos taking forever to sync to iCloud

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