iCloud Photo Library - no data download.....

If you have updated to High Sierra on your Mac, and like me you wanted a fresh copy of your photos from iCloud, you delete you OLD library - with a backup obviously.

Then you crate a new library in the same folder, start Photos and make it a system library - all is good, you the click on iCloud Photo Library and choose "Download Originals to Mac"

The Photos apps starts processing your photos but after 8 hours its not downloading your photos, what is going on?????

Well this annoyed me, until I found the fix, from the Photos app navigate to the Years view, from the top menu bar then you will notice your photos are divided into years, if like me you will notice you have a lot of white space here where you photos should be.

Simple scroll right to the top of the photos and wait for your oldest photos to appear in thumbnail format, then once all the "low resolution" images are in your library as if by magic you Photos app will then download all the "larger photos"

I can only deduce that this is the process from what I have seen:

  1. Download place holder whitespace
  2. Download low resolution image
  3. Check DB is consistent 
  4. Download high resolution image
  5. Check DB is consistent
  6. Report DB in Sync
Step 1-3 for me with about 60,000 photos and videos took 9 hours

Until you get to step 3, nothing much happens with your full photo downloads......once step 3 completes your full resolution photos download immediately.