Photos for iOS stuck uploading to iCloud Photo Library

[rocco1022]

For about 4 days now my Photos on my iPhone haven't been uploading to iCloud Photo Library like they're supposed to be.

In the icloud library settings and in the photos app at the bottom it says "63 Items to Upload" and it keeps going up as I take more pics. My recent photos no longer show up on my other devices. Sync is just broken.

Any ideas?

 

[rocco1022]

Pic of what it shows.

 

[stokepa]

I have no suggest but have the same issue which started 3 days ago.

 

[rocco1022]

Are you perchance beta testing iOS 8.4 public beta?

 

[zagman76]

I am also having this problem.

To make sure I have everything backed up, I launched Dropbox & Amazon Photos.

EDIT: Just after I posted this, I tried the old: "Have you turned it off and back on again?" and that fixed the problem!

 

[rocco1022]

I am also having this problem.

To make sure I have everything backed up, I launched Dropbox & Amazon Photos.

EDIT: Just after I posted this, I tried the old: "Have you turned it off and back on again?" and that fixed the problem!

I had to turn off and on iCloud Photo Library to fix it as well! Annoying.

 

[yaluga]

I was recently able to resolve this problem after trying to deal with it for two months. my upload queue was stuck at 586 photos. I scheduled an appointment with an apple "genius bar" and was told that they have had numerous complaints of this issue but that apple has not released an official fix os of yet (7/10/2015). They stated that they have had success fixing the issue by taking the following steps:

1. turn off iCloud photo library. remove or download photos depending on which ones are already saved on your other devices.

2. forget your home network (setting->wifi->choose home network->"forget this network"

3. turn off wifi

4. power device of and then turn back on.

5. connect to wifi (home network)

6. turn on iCloud photo library

I follow these steps in order and was able to fix my iCloud uploads. it has been a week and i have not had any issues yet. hope this helps.

 

[redsangria]

Thank you! Your fix of turning off icloud photo library, deleting photos and forgetting network, etc, fixed my issue where iCloud photo library wasn't downloading photos to my new iPhone.

When I talked to apple support they had me restore my iphone from the latest backup. The latest backup had icloud photo library "broken" so of course the restored device also had it broken.

Turns out I had upgraded my phone hardware just a few days ago, I was able to use your fix on my iphone 6, and it fixed - magically through the cloud - my iphone5, which had the same problem. I wasn't able to get my iphone6 to work by using your fix, so I just backed up my 'fixed' iphone5, and then restored it to my iphone6 and voila! my iphone6 was working as soon as I opened photos, and then went to settings > icloud > photos it said "updating" and then "preparing 14,000 items". Before your fix it would just say "550 items to upload"

 

[rocco1022]

Isn't it just crazy how flakey this service can be?!? I've had this happen many times to me now and turning off and on iCloud Photo Library is a multi-day fix since I have such a large library. *sigh*

 

[smoosen]

Unfortunately, this did not work for me. It just tries to re-upload all the photos stored on my phone. The only solution I've found to work (this time and when it happened two months ago) is to completely reset and erase all content, then restore from iCloud Backup.

 

[TiaNena]

for some reason it's not allowing me to see my videos.. it just keeps buffering. it also gave me the message you received. When i try to share the video it tells me that Unable to Share. There was an error while preparing to share. Please try again later.

i took pics and video last night. I was able to see them last night. i don't know what happened or what i did.. very frustrating..

 

[DaleCutler]

yaluga – Thanks, that worked!
It seemed like all those steps might not have been necessary, but they didn't take long and it fixed the problem I've had for several days with new photos on my iPod Touch not being able to be uploaded and accessed from my iPad.

 

[shepopotamus]

I've tried all of these fixes and so far nothing has worked, including the list posted by Yaluga.

I finally had to uploaded all of my photos from my iphone 6 onto my computer and then uploaded to icloud. That at least saved the photos. Phone still won't upload to cloud though. Any ideas what to do next?? Any help would be greatly appreciated...

 

[LuisM142]

THANKS! After one hour on the phone with App Support I found this and it solved my problem! Amazing!

I was recently able to resolve this problem after trying to deal with it for two months. my upload queue was stuck at 586 photos. I scheduled an appointment with an apple "genius bar" and was told that they have had numerous complaints of this issue but that apple has not released an official fix os of yet (7/10/2015). They stated that they have had success fixing the issue by taking the following steps:

1. turn off iCloud photo library. remove or download photos depending on which ones are already saved on your other devices.

2. forget your home network (setting->wifi->choose home network->"forget this network"

3. turn off wifi

4. power device of and then turn back on.

5. connect to wifi (home network)

6. turn on iCloud photo library

I follow these steps in order and was able to fix my iCloud uploads. it has been a week and i have not had any issues yet. hope this helps.

 

[jorjahb]

After lots of digging around (and trial and error based on what I found), I discovered that all you have to do is delete the specific Moment from your Photos Collection that is the culprit. But first those photos need to be backed up somehow.

Here is what I did. I plugged my phone into my Mac, with Photos open on the Mac, too. I imported all the photos in the suspect Moment "album" in Photos on my phone into Photos on the Mac via the import button. I made sure all 300 photos (all the photos I took that day or "moment") were showing up in Photos on my Mac before I deleted them off my iPhone. I noticed that once I imported them manually via Photos on the Mac, they finally showed up in iCloud Photos, as well as in Photos on my iPad, which are all synced together (my Mac, my iPad and my iPhone should all automatically upload any new photo content to iCloud... as would normally happen automatically on my phone, but wasn't today).

I figured out which Moment was suspect by two observations. One (the most obvious clue), the automatic upload to iCloud that usually occurs with my Moment "albums" stopped working today... on this particular Moment upload attempt from today. The other thing that clued me in was the fact that if I made any changes to any other Moment, the change would happen across the board on all devices... So, for instance, if in an older Moment, I deleted a photo, it then would come out of the Moment "album" on the other devices as well. However, any changes I made today's Moment (that I suspected was the problem) would not happen across other devices, even after I manually imported all pictures from that Moment into Photos on the Mac... which, incidentally, populated the Moment for that date on my other devices, but only because it was syncing with my Mac where I manually added the photos. In other words, I could manually import the suspect photos from my iPhone into the Photos app on my Mac, and then iCloud and my iPad synced with the Photos app on my Mac, but wouldn't auto sync with that Moment in Photos on my iPhone. So, if I had deleted a photo from the Moment in Photos on the Mac, it would have come out of the Moment "album" on the iPad and in iCloud as well. But if I deleted it from the Moment in Photos on my iPhone, that was not the case.

Somewhere, I read that one file could have gone corrupt in the auto upload process, keeping the entire album from working, and causing Photos on the iPhone to say it's uploading many photos, even though it wasn't. (For me, it was saying it was uploading 13,000+ photos. It was just all mixed up until I deleted that entire Moment.

Knowing every photo from today was in Photos in all the other three places (iPad, iMac and iCloud), I deleted the entire Moment "album" from my iPhone and restarted my phone. After that, everything was working again and went back to normal. And because all are devices are synced, what I deleted was immediately added back onto my phone via iCloud.

Hope that helps!

You DON'T need to turn off iCloud and delete every photo off your phone as some suggest. You just need to figure out when the problem started so that you can figure out which Moment "album" is the culprit, and then delete just that Moment.

 

[jfu699]

I know this thread is now a year old, but THANK YOU! Even with my new iPhone 6s on iOS 10, this problem still exists and I have just wasted an hour with this exact same issue. These steps solved the problem and my iPhone is now finally downloading all the photos from my iPad.

I was recently able to resolve this problem after trying to deal with it for two months. my upload queue was stuck at 586 photos. I scheduled an appointment with an apple "genius bar" and was told that they have had numerous complaints of this issue but that apple has not released an official fix os of yet (7/10/2015). They stated that they have had success fixing the issue by taking the following steps:

1. turn off iCloud photo library. remove or download photos depending on which ones are already saved on your other devices.

2. forget your home network (setting->wifi->choose home network->"forget this network"

3. turn off wifi

4. power device of and then turn back on.

5. connect to wifi (home network)

6. turn on iCloud photo library

I follow these steps in order and was able to fix my iCloud uploads. it has been a week and i have not had any issues yet. hope this helps.

 

[maccagerl]

hi!
Can you explain where to find the forget home network button?
When I go under the fan (wifi) icon at the top of the screen I only have the option to turn off wifi- is this the same as forget home network?
thanks for your help!

 

[glennelf2014]

The "Forget This Network" button is found for a specific network that your iOS device can connect to.

Yes, first go into Settings, then choose WiFi.
You'll then see a list of networks come up by name.
Choose the one you're currently connected to.

You'll then see "Forget This Network" come up for that network. Press that.

Later on you'll try to sign on to that network again when your iOS device finds it.

 

[glennelf2014]

I know this thread is now a year old, but THANK YOU! Even with my new iPhone 6s on iOS 10, this problem still exists and I have just wasted an hour with this exact same issue. These steps solved the problem and my iPhone is now finally downloading all the photos from my iPad.

Same here still on Nov 4, 2016. My iPad running iOS 10 was not uploading to iCloud 5 photos I took the night before. I followed the steps copied into Reply #16 as presented earlier. Everything is fine now.

One thing I needed to note. "Power off" means actually powering off the device. It's not just logging off by pressing the power button. It's actually holding it for a while, then doing the "slide to power off." Apparently some services and/or connections get reinitialized when powering it on again.

 

[Oniedia]

Well, here we are, January 2017, and this issue is still happening. I've had my phone for 2 months and it only started happening last night. I only realised because my battery went from 80% to 0 overnight.