iCloud Documents on Mac stuck at "100% uploaded"

January 29, 2023 6:41 PM

on my M1 iMac, I've been experiencing an issue where iCloud Documents routinely gets stuck at "100% uploaded," which prevents files from properly syncing to other devices. It seems like it occasionally does update, but it's always seemingly at least "one change behind" on my phone and iPad. My current go-to solution is to just occasionally do "killall bird" in Terminal ("bird" is the iCloud sync daemon), but I'm curious if anyone knows a way to figure out what's at the root of the problem.
posted by DoctorFedora to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Perhaps your iCloud storage is full.
posted by hh1000 at 11:46 PM on January 29, 2023

Response by poster: I can assure you with absolute 100% confidence that my iCloud storage is not full. The issue is that it does actually upload all of the data, but the progress indicator (like if I click the little "i" next to "iCloud Drive" in the locations sidebar of a Finder window) gets stuck at 100% completion. For instance, right now it's stuck on "Uploading 1 item, 576.5 MB of 576.5 MB," but I don't know what that one item is, or where, or why it's causing iCloud Drive to get "stuck" on it.
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:24 AM on January 30, 2023

Have you gone to icloud.com and taken a look at what’s there?
posted by Thorzdad at 5:17 AM on January 30, 2023

I don't think we have enough information to suggest answers. Can you make an appointment with the Apple Kyoto genius bar? Perhaps they can offer more diagnosis. Sorry, no better answer comes to mind.
posted by blob at 6:47 AM on January 30, 2023

Response by poster: Yeah, it might be the sort of thing that requires getting in touch with proper tech support, but at the same time given that the best solution I’ve been able to find so far by googling around pretty thoroughly has involved manually killing a daemon on occasion, I do wonder how much advice they might be able to offer that wouldn’t require third-party software to peer under the hood.
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:53 PM on January 30, 2023

Best answer: well uh

emptying the trash just kind of… fixed it

so I guess the moral of the story here is: don't have over 10,000 undeleted items sitting in the trash? I'm almost angry at how weird and mundane a solution this months-long problem had, hahahaha
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:49 PM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

that is just weird. Congratulations on finding an answer, no matter how strange the answer is.
posted by blob at 8:05 PM on January 30, 2023

Response by poster: yeah, I guess I must have sent some iCloud Drive file to the trash at some point, and evidently something got snagged somewhere? I'm pleased to have a solution, but on some level I also feel like I have been climbing into and out of my apartment through the window for the past six months and only just noticed that I have the key for my front door on my keyring after all
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:50 PM on January 30, 2023