Stuck Waiting to Download

Thanks for the suggestions. I have followed all of the steps except “Contact Apple Support.” I have contacted Apple Support a few times through the years and never have they resolved a sync issue. By never, I mean actually never. My most recent question was about why it took so long for a video upload to begin and if I could estimate that time because the delay was impacting a workflow.

Support asked the regular questions, e.g. “Is the phone charged and turned on? Have you tried rebooting? Is it connected to the network?” Yes, I checked all of that before I called with a specific nuance of video synchronizing to iCloud. The support session ended when the support representative told me that in order to proceed, I would need to:

1. Remove all iCloud photos from iPhone
2. Connect iPhone to Mac
3. Without using iPhone or Mac, wait for Mac to synchronize all photos to iPhone
4. Then call back support with the results

I told the representative that the question was about iPhone uploading to iCloud, asking how would synchronizing from Mac to iPhone provide any insight? Further, the iCloud photos and videos consume some 1.2 TB of space with the Mac only holding a portion of those locally. To synchronize, the Mac would need to download almost a terabyte of media from iCloud. Conservative estimates put me without a phone or Mac for the better part of a week, with the results providing no value.

All of my Apple Support interactions are similar. I will not be contacting Apple Support. I was hoping that someone in the Apple Community had seen this before and had an answer. Instead I will add this to the list of “no one knows” questions.

Thanks again.

Thanks for the reply. I know background refresh is working on the Mac because the current version is visible on the iPhone, just not the iPad. The iPhone and iPad are on the same WiFi network and each have a SIM card. I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting WiFi on the iPad but that appears to change nothing.