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Photos not syncing from iCloud to Mac OS Ventura 13.2.1

Sync between Mac (recent upgrad to OS Ventura 13.2.1) and icloud doesn't seem to be working. Sync between iphone 11 and icloud fine and current.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 13.2

Posted on Mar 4, 2023 2:52 PM

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Posted on Mar 5, 2023 6:14 AM

What is the status bar showing in Photos on your Mac? You will find the status bar below the "All Photos" tab.

Check the status of your library in Photos for macOS - Apple Support


If photos is still uploading items to iCloud, you will not be seeing any downloads from iCloud, until the upload has been finished. This may take a while after the upgrade to Ventura.


9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 5, 2023 6:14 AM in response to RumiKern

What is the status bar showing in Photos on your Mac? You will find the status bar below the "All Photos" tab.

Check the status of your library in Photos for macOS - Apple Support


If photos is still uploading items to iCloud, you will not be seeing any downloads from iCloud, until the upload has been finished. This may take a while after the upgrade to Ventura.


Mar 5, 2023 6:11 PM in response to léonie

status bar says Syncing with iCloud…

been that way continuously. hours and hours. When I check icloud in Finder, first, I don't see Photos even listed; and second, the status circle show a small pie sliver - stuck on uploading.

Have closed out several times; also restarted .... But appears last update was ~ a week ago from iphone to icloud. And those are not sync'ing between icloud and Mac and Photos on Mac just shows same message. But Photos otherwise works as a viewer and editor.

Mar 9, 2023 11:35 AM in response to RumiKern

As long as Photos on your Mac is still uploading to iCloud, it will not download new photos from iCloud. Photos needs first to upload all photos and merge them into the existing library. Then it will start downloading the new photos.

You might have items in your library that are incompatible with iCloud and are causing the upload to hang.


How large is your Photos Library? For my moderately sized library with just 50000 photos and videos it took two weeks for the library to upload again to iCloud after the Ventura upgrade. You may want to check, if you have items in your library that cannot be uploaded, for example very old videos, that are neither encoded HEVC nor H.264 .






Apr 3, 2023 7:22 AM in response to RumiKern

I have the same issue (but it's not just with Ventura...it's been an issue for a longtime). Photos from iPhone iOS sync almost instantly with iCloud Photos but macOS Photos on my MBA can take days before I see a sync, I try everything (changing from "All" to "Years" to "Months" to "Days" to try and wake it up. It seems to have a mind of its own and sync's when it's good and ready. I wish there was "Sync Now" button to manually activate a sync. I like doing cropping/edits, etc on my MBA. I know I can do an Airdrop but then when it finally syncs, I end up with two copies on my MBA.

Apr 18, 2023 7:37 AM in response to KDW84

Is there an album or folder "Unable to upload" in the sidebar? Then look at these items.



Otherwise you have to find out by systematic searching, which items are missing in iCloud.

The usual suspects are older videos, that are using a codec, that is no longer supported. The videos are easy to check, if you do not have too many.

You could also search systematically with a smart album for image files, that are neither JPEG nor hEIC nor TIFF or the RAW format you are using with your camera. I had to remove all PDF files from my Photos Library, all audio files, all .PICT or .BMP files to get Photos syncing again.

To test an image or video, if it is in a supported format, export the original from Photos, then try to import the exported file into a different Photos Library. You will get an error message, if the file needs converting to a different format.

Apr 22, 2023 10:45 PM in response to wingdroid

Try to find out which 45 photos are missing in iCloud and cannot be uploaded. Compare your recently imported photos from your Mac to the photos in Photos at www.icloud.com . Are there any items in an unusual format? Export the photos that the mac does not upload to iCloud to a folder on your Mac, then delete them from Photos, also from Recently Deleted. Does the message about uploading change? Once the upload has finished, Photos should start downloading from iCloud.


Photos not syncing from iCloud to Mac OS Ventura 13.2.1

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