Stuck on "downloading originals" after updating to Sonoma.

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 issue has also been reported on the Mac Rumors forum a few days ago: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/downloading-originals-icloud-photo-library-stuck.2413088/

MacBook Pro (M2 Max, 2023)

Posted on Dec 12, 2023 09:00 AM

Reply

Similar questions

3 replies

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Stuck on "downloading originals" after updating to Sonoma.

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.