Photos Library-"Download Originals to this Mac"-stuck for over a day

[Marla13]

I accidentally posted this message on a Catalina thread, so am reposting here as I am using Mojave OS version 10.14.6-have created a new Photos System library and it's been stuck on

since yesterday morning! Over 24 hours and it hasn't downloaded anything more. In iCloud I have in the region of 35,000 photos and over 4,000 videos so I know for certain that the job is not done! Does anyone have any suggestions? I am using an external drive for my Photos library.

Is it possible I might need to abort procedure and try to create a new system library with "optimise mac storage" ticked to see if this solves the problem? Truthfully, I have *always* had the latter box ticked-this is the first time I've created a system library with "download originals..." and it just seems to be stuck...but *so* stuck...for over a day!

Thank you for any advice you can provide...

 

[madrich]

Did you ever do this before? With that kind of data volume, it probably will take weeks!

 

[Marla13]

Thanks Madrich! Yes, I have done this before but it never got "stuck" and stopped downloading. At least not with my previous OS (Sierra) That's reassuring to know (I would rather know that it could take weeks due to the # of photos/videos I have) than wonder if I have a corrupt photo or video. Since my original posting I've actually reverted back to my original library-which is set to "optimise mac storage"-but again-it's just stuck and not updating...though it says it is. I'll update you here when I have an update. For now, I'm just leaving it for a few days and seeing if # of photos/videos increases.

 

[madrich]

Ok I assume that since you did this before, that you have saved the data somewhere in/outside your PC. Why are you not just saving only the new data that was not backup previously, and adding those files to existing saved data wherever that maybe saved to?

 

[Marla13]

I don't understand what you mean. When I said I have done this before, I meant I have created a Photo library before.
As far as I am aware-Photos does not work the way you are suggesting "saving only the new data that was not backup previously, and adding those files to existing saved data wherever that maybe saved to"?

When a Photos library (new "System" library) is created, it gets all it's contents from the Cloud. So all of my photos were downloading (successfully) from the Cloud *until* I upgraded my OS and since that date, nothing has downloaded from the cloud. I tested out my library by dragging a photo from my desktop to my Photos library, and it appeared (as expected) so the problem doesn't seem to be with my external drive. The problem is that none of the photos or videos taken *since* the Mojave upgrade (from Sierra) have downloaded to my Photos library on my external hard drive.

 

[madrich]

I was under the impression that you had saved your files to an external drive under Sierra. If you recently upgraded rom Sierra to Mojave then spotlighting indexing update maybe causing a delay in downloading your data.

 

[Marla13]

Hi Madrich,

Maybe it's the terminology you are using that is confusing me. I didn't/haven't "saved" any files. My Photos library is stored on an external hard drive. When you connect this drive to the laptop it is meant to download all of the photos from iCloud. It wasn't doing this-*after* the Mojave upgrade. However, it has recently started "uploading" so I am going to wait and see what happens once it finishes uploading (I am hoping it then "downloads"). I hear you re-the Spotlight-and that's a very plausible point, but I always "exclude" my external drive from Spotlight (I add it to "Privacy" so that it doesn't run on the external drive). I'll update you when I have any news/updates. Thanks!

 

[roberto.caldas]

I had this problem after upgrading to Catalina, but I saw people having this issue in different versions. I tried everything... starting a new library, turning off/on iCloud, formatting and installing all over again. Then I read somewhere a guy saying that after he was able to load and see all thumbnails in the most zoomed out view of All Photos the downloads started.

Surprisingly, that has worked for me, at least for now. I've done it in two different libraries (two different accounts in the same Mac). It seems it only starts downloading originals once all previews/thumbnails are downloaded.

The problem is that in order to load the thumbnails you have to zoom in and scroll through all your photos, which can take a long time. So I wrote a script to run on Automator.

This script press "up arrow" on Photos every 1 seconds, to scroll up one row. Zoom in in your All Photos, click on the most recent one and run the applescript on Automator. After some hours it will load all previews and thumbnails from iCloud, and hopefully start the download:

on run {input, parameters}
   
    activate application "Photos"
    repeat 10000 times
        do shell script "/bin/sleep 1"
        tell application "System Events"
            key code 126
        end tell
    end repeat
   
    return input
end run

You may want to change the sleep 1 value to run it faster/slower, and the number of repeats.