After turning on iCloud sync for my photos, my free storage filled up quickly. No big deal – I’m happy to pay the $1 a month for a bit extra, which I have done. However, having done this my iPhone kept complaining that ‘iCloud storage is full’ and it wouldn’t continue to sync.
I tried force quitting the Photos app, and turning the phone off and on again, but it still said storage was full. This was only within Photos – in iCloud settings I was showing over 14GB free. I turned iCloud syncing of photos off (which removed already synced photos from the phone) then, after a while, turned it on again. Now nothing is happening – after 24 hours no pictures have been restored to the phone from iCloud.
iCloud sync continues to work as normal for things like Calendar. iCloud photo sync continues to work fine between Photos on the Mac and my iPad.
Any thoughts on how to kick (re)start syncing of photos to the phone? Before all this it was working very nicely.
Finally got this working but only after a lot of trial and error. I turned iCloud Photo Library off and back on numerous times on my phone with no result: the iPhone refused to sync photos with iCloud in either direction. Also tried turning photo sync off for iCloud on my Mac, then back on. Still nothing.
This morning I turned off ‘iCloud Photo Library’ and ‘Upload to my Photo Stream’, then restarted my iPhone. Then I turned both of those on again. Wonder of wonders! Syncing started again!
I now have my iPhone, iPad and Photos on the Mac all beautifully in sync. Syncing of changes is really fast between all three – it really is excellent when it works.
As an aside, it seems to me that Photo Stream is redundant if you’re using Library sync? Or am I missing something?
David Brewster
davidbrewster.photography