{"id":3881,"date":"2025-09-21T01:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T20:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/?p=3881"},"modified":"2025-09-21T03:32:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T22:32:06","slug":"how-to-fix-mac-photos-app-when-it-stops-syncing-with-icloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/how-to-fix-mac-photos-app-when-it-stops-syncing-with-icloud\/","title":{"rendered":"how to fix mac photos app when it stops syncing with icloud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For no apparent reason, the Photos app on my Mac stopped syncing with iCloud sometime over the last two months, and neither of the better threads on Apple Support (<a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/101559\">if your iCloud photos are not syncing<\/a>) nor on Reddit (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/ApplePhotos\/comments\/18nm21v\/photos_on_mac_not_syncing\/\">Photos on Mac not syncing<\/a>) worked for me. Here&#8217;s what I did that ended up doing the trick:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Quit Photos.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Open Finder and go to \/Users\/(your name)\/Pictures\/Photos Library.photoslibrary<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Delete that file!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Open Photos again.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Go to Preferences and select Make New Library.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Make it your System Photo Library.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Switch to the iCloud tab in Preferences and make sure iCloud Photos is checked.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you have Optimize Mac Storage selected, go back to Library and see if it&#8217;s actually updating\/downloading from iCloud or if it&#8217;s just kinda stuck.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If it&#8217;s still stuck, try this: go back to the iCloud tab in Preferences and select Download Originals. Go back to Library and see if anything&#8217;s changed. <em>Don&#8217;t worry, we&#8217;re not actually going to download all of them\u2014this is just what jumpstarted Photos into actually syncing for me<\/em>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Is Photos actually syncing? Yes! Go back to the iCloud tab and select Optimize Mac Storage again.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At this point, all my thumbnails were finally downloading and Photos was once again syncing with iCloud. Hope this helps!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For no apparent reason, the Photos app on my Mac stopped syncing with iCloud sometime over the last two months, and neither of the better<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3881"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3886,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions\/3886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}