Downloading Originals iCloud Photo Library Stuck

[angelofioren]

The other day I noticed my Mac Studio had stopped downloading my iCloud Photo Library (about 270GB) originals to the external SSD I have been using since I had my 27 inch iMac. I figured the issue was that it was because I recently started using Plex to share a few video files from it. I decided was due for a completely fresh library and I decided to download it to a new SSD thinking that with my gigabit connection it would be no sweat. Unfortunately I am now stuck at over 47 000 originals downloading and it has not budged. I found a fix where deleting a syndication.photolibray file helped some people but it turns out that was for a syncing issue. Mine library syncs fine, but originals just don't want to download.

Any one else come across this? Is it just a matter of time? I know you can start a slide show or download the expo the modified originals, but that won't fix the underlying issue that new iCloud Photos don't download.

Thanks for any help!

 

[jjclay]

I have the same issue, and after a week struggling & following other advice Downloading Originals to my local Photos library is still stuck. I have a new M3 MacBook Pro, with 18,500 images (including 1600 videos) - all up around 160Gb on iCloud. Latest software versions installed (MacOS 14.1.2 Sonoma and Photos 9). I have tried the following without success:
- using external SSDs with LOTS of storage, formatted correctly (APFS, non-case-sensitive)
- clearing internal SSD space and trying that - same result
- starting a new library (several times!)
- rebuilding the library (many times...)
- restart of Mac, including in safe mode
- trying different networks
- enabling & disabling 'Optimise storage'; with disabled it SHOULD download all hi-res images
- leaving my computer on overnight, both with Photos open & closed (some things are background processes)
- killing/relaunching photos processes (e.g. photolibraryd, photoanalysisd)
- removing the 'syndication.photolibray' as you mentioned

I currently have a support call logged with Apple for investigation - and hearing others have a similar issue makes me think it's a broader system/software issue and not just me. Downloading originals still works fine on an older MacBook Pro & my iPhone.

There is a way to to force download of originals by selecting images, right-clicking, and selecting 'play slideshow' - this forces Photos to download high-res images before playing the slideshow. However, automatic downloads of originals is still stuck...

Hopefully Apple find & release a fix for this...extremely frustrating!

JJ

 

[angelofioren]

I'm just sort of glad to know that it's a Sonoma bug or something with iCloud and I can stop rebuilding my library or starting a new one. For now I will just let it be. The library is okay when I look at it on my other devices, but I like knowing I have the full thing downloaded on my Mac. Hopefully the next update fixes it. I checked this morning and it did download a couple of thousand more originals, but when you have 47k originals a few thousand a night with a gigabit connection feels excessively slow.

 

[jjclay]

I'm in exactly the same position - all originals appear to be in iCloud fine, and download to several other devices AOK. Also have a 1Gb connection, which helps! Am currently manually downloading everything onto my SSD so that I can curate my library properly...just hope it syncs OK once done.

 

[angelofioren]

I'm doing the same. Exporting as originals just to have them separate from the Photo Library file.

 

[donawalt]

I the it's an iCloud issue, I have seen it in Sonoma and prior. Turning off iCloud, trying off shared albus, rebooting - turning iCloud on, turning share albums on works sometimes but it' long.

What I have found works best when iCloud gets stuck is doing the rebuild of the Photo library - Shift-Ctrl click the app.

 

[MacDevil7334]

I also had this issue when setting up my new M3 MBP. One other way I found to help it along was to select a group of pictures, right click and select play slideshow. This would force Photos to download the pictures before building the slideshow. Once it is done downloading, just cancel the slideshow. I did it in ~1000 picture blocks and got it done in an afternoon. It was tedious but seemed to work.

Though, I just looked and now photos says I have 1118 originals still to download. Not sure why it is saying that when it seemed to be done yesterday. Very buggy.

Edit (20 mins later): Just tried highlighting my whole library (about 22k images) and creating a slideshow. Photos only downloaded 10 additional images for the slideshow. But that seemed to kickstart it into downloading the rest of the originals it seemed to think it was missing. Now only 603 to go!

 

[angelofioren]

I also had this issue when setting up my new M3 MBP. One other way I found to help it along was to select a group of pictures, right click and select play slideshow. This would force Photos to download the pictures before building the slideshow. Once it is done downloading, just cancel the slideshow. I did it in ~1000 picture blocks and got it done in an afternoon. It was tedious but seemed to work.

Though, I just looked and now photos says I have 1118 originals still to download. Not sure why it is saying that when it seemed to be done yesterday. Very buggy.

Edit (20 mins later): Just tried highlighting my whole library (about 22k images) and creating a slideshow. Photos only downloaded 10 additional images for the slideshow. But that seemed to kickstart it into downloading the rest of the originals it seemed to think it was missing. Now only 603 to go!

That's great! I just think it's annoying we have to jump through hoops to get these files downloaded. The whole point of the option is to have it done automatically. I hope this bug gets fixed in the next update.

 

[MacDevil7334]

That's great! I just think it's annoying we have to jump through hoops to get these files downloaded. The whole point of the option is to have it done automatically. I hope this bug gets fixed in the next update.

Yeah the bug is super annoying. I wanted to be sure I had all the originals before wiping my old computer though. I'm glad it is at least possible to force it somehow. Photos seems to be very flaky about automated tasks in general.

 

[Chrisswh]

Same issue here, in my case I already have to pictures downloaded but new items down download, I used the select all + slideshow trick but that doesn't fix all the remanding downloads, only a few which is strange.

 

[angelofioren]

Same issue here, in my case I already have to pictures downloaded but new items down download, I used the select all + slideshow trick but that doesn't fix all the remanding downloads, only a few which is strange.

I'm taking the time to export them all as originals to a different external drive which is downloading them at the same time. Down to about 15k left!

 

[Chrisswh]

I have about 80,000 items in my photos database, I keep them all in the cloud however I like keeping them on my SSD as well for redundancy. I've been doing this for over a year without any problems after updating to MacOS Sonoma I began encountering this issue. Instead of saying “synced to iCloud” it says downloading 22 originals. I used the select all + slideshow trick to force them to download in my main photos section and in my hidden photos section that brought the number down from 22 to 7 originals. However, this number never moves I left it overnight and it stayed the same. I've tried “repairing” my library and I have “rebuilt” my library over three times it all takes over 48 hours to complete eventually it will say “synced to iCloud” however once I close my photos library, I click the eject button and it presents me with an error suggesting that the drive is still in use. I select “cancel”, wait a bit and instead of ejecting the drive I select shut down or restart. When I get back on and connect the drive it will either present me with a message that the photos application is re-syncing the entire library or that there are a set number of originals downloading, I repeat the process I “select all” + slideshow to download the alleged x number or remaining photos however it doesn’t get rid of all of them… very frustrating I’ve been trying to fix this for the past week, yesterday I updated to 14.2 but the issue still persists.

 

[Chrisswh]

I'm taking the time to export them all as originals to a different external drive which is downloading them at the same time. Down to about 15k left!

I think I might do that as well.

 

[angelofioren]

I have about 80,000 items in my photos database, I keep them all in the cloud however I like keeping them on my SSD as well for redundancy. I've been doing this for over a year without any problems after updating to MacOS Sonoma I began encountering this issue. Instead of saying “synced to iCloud” it says downloading 22 originals. I used the select all + slideshow trick to force them to download in my main photos section and in my hidden photos section that brought the number down from 22 to 7 originals. However, this number never moves I left it overnight and it stayed the same. I've tried “repairing” my library and I have “rebuilt” my library over three times it all takes over 48 hours to complete eventually it will say “synced to iCloud” however once I close my photos library, I click the eject button and it presents me with an error suggesting that the drive is still in use. I select “cancel”, wait a bit and instead of ejecting the drive I select shut down or restart. When I get back on and connect the drive it will either present me with a message that the photos application is re-syncing the entire library or that there are a set number of originals downloading, I repeat the process I “select all” + slideshow to download the alleged x number or remaining photos however it doesn’t get rid of all of them… very frustrating I’ve been trying to fix this for the past week, yesterday I updated to 14.2 but the issue still persists.

This whole thing started for me when I looked at the Photo library on my Mac and saw that it had about 30 photos to download and it had not downloaded anything for a few days. I thought it was because I started using Plex again with that same SSD but it was not that. Looks widespread and I wish I had not gone through the trouble of rebuilding my whole library since that made it worse. This thing is, the MAJORITY of people just have their photos on their phones using optimize storage and don't give it a second thought.

 

[Chrisswh]

I'm taking the time to export them all as originals to a different external drive which is downloading them at the same time. Down to about 15k left!

I think I might do that as well.

This whole thing started for me when I looked at the Photo library on my Mac and saw that it had about 30 photos to download and it had not downloaded anything for a few days. I thought it was because I started using Plex again with that same SSD but it was not that. Looks widespread and I wish I had not gone through the trouble of rebuilding my whole library since that made it worse. This thing is, the MAJORITY of people just have their photos on their phones using optimize storage and don't give it a second thought.

i’m really glad that he is not just me, a lot of my photos are very precious to me.

 

[Ilde]

Hi,
Same issue, but affecting my M3 MBP, M1 Mac mini and iPhone 15 Pro Max. All of them running on last official build of the several OS's (Sonoma 14.2 and iOS 17.2).
Tried with deleting the entire library, rebooting devices, connecting to chargers but nothing happens, the amount of pics to be downloaded remains frozen. Not even the workaround of the slideshow works for me. Must be a bug affecting the different OS's or to iCloud itself.

Regards,

 

[angelofioren]

Hi,
Same issue, but affecting my M3 MBP, M1 Mac mini and iPhone 15 Pro Max. All of them running on last official build of the several OS's (Sonoma 14.2 and iOS 17.2).
Tried with deleting the entire library, rebooting devices, connecting to chargers but nothing happens, the amount of pics to be downloaded remains frozen. Not even the workaround of the slideshow works for me. Must be a bug affecting the different OS's or to iCloud itself.

Regards,

Seems to basically be an issue on any device you use to download originals. I wonder what is up and how long it will take to fix.

 

[jjclay]

So a wider issue with Sonoma and/or Photos. I am on a call with Apple again to get it resolved as their last suggestion (reformat external SSD to APFS non-case sensitive) didn't work. Also created yet another new library on my internal M3 MacBook and had the same issue. I have 16,757 Photos and 1596 videos, and even after manually downloading originals using the 'slideshow' tactic, I still have "Downloading 334 Originals" stuck for days. Things is if I select everything in my library and 'play slideshow' nothing else downloads and the slideshow starts straight away - so no idea what the missing 334 Originals are...

Definitely a bug, which I hope is fixed soon.

 

[animagus]

Same issue here on my M3 Pro MBP, Sonoma 14.1.1 (edit: and 14.2), using the System Photos Library on an APFS-formatted external drive.

I used the slideshow workaround to force full-res downloads as described above, which worked for all but 8 photos at this point. I can't get those final 8 to download.

Hopefully it is fixed soon.

 

[borez]

Experiencing the same situation here, which is happening on a new MBA and a (reset) iPad Pro.
Advanced Data Protection isn't working either.

Created an open ticket with Apple, and they are escalating this issue to backend engineers.

 

[angelofioren]

Same issue here on my M3 Pro MBP, Sonoma 14.1.1, using the System Photos Library on an APFS-formatted external drive.

I used the slideshow workaround to force full-res downloads as described above, which worked for all but 8 photos at this point. I can't get those final 8 to download.

Hopefully it is fixed soon.

I have 32 left to download after having exported everything year by year as originals to an external drive. For now, so that I don’t see the downloading message I turned of download originals since it isn’t working anyway. Once it starts working again I will turn it back on.

 

[BrettApple]

Similar situation here. I have around 40,000 photos on my System iCloud library housed on an external NVMe SSD with over 1TB free so space should not be an issue. I recently got an M2 Mac mini and on Ventura it was fine. Just stays on all day and actively downloads what photos I take to local storage. But at least as late as a week or two ago it suddenly stopped leaving me with over 800 originals to download, that it wasn't downloading.

I tried the slide show trick and that eventually got it down to "Downloading 200 Originals" but now it hasn't budged, hasn't gone up, or down despite continuing to add media from various cameras/SD cards, my iPad, and iPhone. Just totally stuck. At one point it did flash up the "need internet' message when trying to pull some down for the slide show. Umm, I definitely have internet Mr. Photos app! Sure it's about 80mbps on a good day but plenty for iCloud to sync.

Reading through the above it certainly seems like something is amiss on Apple's end. Guess I'll hope for the best but this is the sole local copy of my library that I do copy/paste to a HDD about once or twice a year to keep in a safe. Would be nice to know it actually has the original files from the last few months.

Here's to hoping they fix it, perhaps without an OS update, since it broke on its own well before updating to 14.2 and 14.2 did not fix it. Ventura was fine.

 

[ingsings]

I used the slideshow workaround to force full-res downloads as described above, which worked for all but 8 photos at this point. I can't get those final 8 to download.

+1 - I was left with about 75 photos not downloaded (of 10,000+).

Googling around a bit, this bug seems to have appeared occasionally for several years.

 

[ingsings]

+1 - I was left with about 75 photos not downloaded (of 10,000+).

I was able to force the last 75 photos to sync. I borrowed the slideshow idea, but in a different context:

I selected a few thousand photos at a time. Then I did File -> Export -> Export Unmodified Originals (while deselecting "Export IPTC as XMP"). Exporting the originals forced the missing full resolution originals to be downloaded. This worked on two different libraries (mine and my spouse's). I could see the files being downloaded in Activity Monitor.

I would imagine you could do this directly, without the intervening slideshow step, but I can no longer test this. Also - I suggest NOT exporting to a network drive, that would slow the export process down quite a bit!

Hope this workaround helps someone!

 

[animagus]

Same issue here on my M3 Pro MBP, Sonoma 14.1.1 (edit: and 14.2), using the System Photos Library on an APFS-formatted external drive.

I used the slideshow workaround to force full-res downloads as described above, which worked for all but 8 photos at this point. I can't get those final 8 to download.

Hopefully it is fixed soon.

Since me posting this reply a few days ago, the number has increased from 8 to 136, and re-running the slideshow trick dropped it down to 13, so it seems new pictures are affecting it.

I then tried ingstings' Export trick:

[...] I did File -> Export -> Export Unmodified Originals (while deselecting "Export IPTC as XMP")

This worked to get everything downloaded. Weirdly, during the export, the message in Photos changed to "Downloading 26 Originals", so now I'm not sure whether the internal logic is even correct on the 13 Originals it said were downloading earlier. Many thanks!