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Suddenly, my Mac stopped synching my photos:

Not enough local storage, updating paused

I have tons of free space on iCloud, and optimize storage is turned on: Optimize storage There's no way that photos should take up 170 GB of space when there's only 250 GB in total of photos on iCloud: No space I have tried:

  • Turning this function on and off in Photos.app
  • Rebooting apps and the device
  • Using all available options in the 'manage storage' dialog
  • Turning off synching entirely: System Preferences > Internet Accounts > iCloud > Photos (uncheck) > Delete from my device

What else can I try to fix this bug?

Running the latest version of macOS.

Update: Super buggy. I tried turning off iCloud completely, and now get this — 170GB of undeletable "Other" photos stuck on my Mac: iCloud turned off I expected more paying for a premium MacBook Pro and $120 a year of iCloud synching. Do I need to take extreme measures and reinstall macOS completely?

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  • How much space do your photos (and videos) actually occupy on iCloud? You can check it also through icloud.com/settings.
    – Alper
    May 16, 2020 at 2:24
  • Since 89GB are still available on you Mac, I would try filling your storage almost completely and use it like that for a day or two. That might trigger the photos "your mac is low on space" constraint and get rid of the full res photos on your Mac. Also make sure to run Photos in the background as well as have a reasonably fast wifi connection.
    – iOSapps.de
    May 16, 2020 at 9:28
  • Try running something like OmniDiskSweeper to eee which files are taking up that much storage.
    – At0micMutex
    May 17, 2020 at 5:39
  • @youngpilot, thanks, I actually already did that. There's actually only 35GB available apparently now, but that amount keeps jumping around randomly. I think there's a major bug with these photos.
    – Baumr
    May 25, 2020 at 19:59
  • @Alper, they take up like 250GB on iCloud
    – Baumr
    May 25, 2020 at 20:00

2 Answers 2

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There’s no reason to take extreme measures.

  1. When was the last backup?
  2. Set up Time Machine if you have no backup, exclude system files, it only backs up live data and not snapshots.
  3. Make a new user account and give it admin.
  4. Turn off automatic log in and reboot.

Now you can use the new admin account to examine if pruning local snapshots clears all the data. If not, delete your old user account (it’s safely backed up) and repeat cleaning snapshots. Only then would I consider an erase install if the storage allocation doesn’t make sense.

To get control of iCloud, you can restore your user account from backup while the internet is disabled, then disable cloud sync and learn why full automatic didn’t give you the results you expected. Nothing seems fundamentally wrong other than perhaps not considering APFS snapshots and needing to gather some info on how much photo data is actually reported as being in the cloud.

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  • Thanks Mike, unfortunately I'm not at home for the next few weeks/months given the situation so can't do any usual backups. I have 2TB in iCloud that I'm using for document/desktop backups though.
    – Baumr
    May 25, 2020 at 21:04
  • Oh no - let me see if I can find an interim solution. I’ve always seen Photos first download all the images - then thin them. I wonder if you have an edge case that’s not handled well. Hang in there - you should get the data back quickly or we can help with pruning local snapshots if they don’t fix themselves in a day.
    – bmike ♦
    May 26, 2020 at 1:26
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The only thing that worked here was:

  • turning off all synching and iCloud features,
  • deleting all Photos.app files from my hard drive,
  • and then starting with a fresh library.
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