How Long Does It Take To Update iCloud Albums

scott_nelson

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Mar 29, 2018
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I'm new to Mac. I was using a Windows machine and syncing with Dropbox for years. I just bought my first ever Mac (M1 Air). I've left Dropbox and am now on the 200GB iCloud plan. I recently transferred all my photos from an external hard drive to the photo library, around 10,000 or so. In the Photos app, I created albums for each year. Everything is there and is working perfectly. When I log into iCloud.com, it shows the exact same number of photos so I'm assuming they are all there. The albums on iCloud.com are taking forever to populate. The first few I did are complete but the rest are jumping by maybe one or two photos a day. Like I mentioned, the Photos app on the computer seems to be working wonderfully (although the People are taking their sweet time updating). Any ideas?
 

EdwinG

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Mar 10, 2012
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I’m going from memory here, so someone should double-check.

If you scroll to the bottom of your Photos “list”, it should say whether it is updating with a progress bar, or when it was last updated.
 

scott_nelson

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Mar 29, 2018
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My Photos app, iCloud.com, and the iCloud setting in System preferences all list 10,641 photos. But the albums on iCloud.com don't seem to be updating very fast. For instance one album has 339 photos and the same album on iCloud.com website shows 5. Another has 615 and the iCloud.com has 79. I leave it alone all day and come home thinking there will be lots of progress but maybe one or two of the albums have gained 2 or 3 photos.

Does Photos update when the Mac is in sleep mode? Does the app have to be open? It's a head scratcher. At least for me.
 

scott_nelson

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Mar 29, 2018
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I figured it out a solution so I figured I'd stop back with the solution incase anyone else encounters this issue.

I knew all my photos were in iCloud by the number showing. My albums were just taking painfully long to sync. I simply went into the Photos app and deleted the albums that weren't syncing. I checked iCloud.com to back sure the deletions went through and then simply recreated the albums. All albums were synced within minutes.