Find what is not right

Photos and iCloud fail quietly

Photo Clinic reads what they will not tell you and explains it in plain words, with fixes to try. It only looks. It changes nothing.

Download for Mac

The Check Photos screen — Check Photos: one tap checks everything

One tap for the big picture

Check everything for me gives one verdict (healthy, needs attention or problem) from four checks:

Your library files

Empty, wrongly named and duplicate files, older formats and look-alike folders.

Photos upload progress

Whether Photos is progressing or stuck, with time left.

Photos and iCloud logs

Problems in the system logs, explained with fixes.

This Mac

Free space, battery, power mode and heat.

Is it all in iCloud?

Is it all uploaded? Counts what is in Photos and what has reached iCloud, works out your speed and time left, and says so if nothing has moved for about 45 minutes.
Which photos have not uploaded? Lists each one with its size, date and the likely reason: an empty file, a wrong extension, an unusual type, a huge file or a missing original.
Did my albums and Live Photos arrive? Compares what you sent with what Photos holds.
Sync queue and meter. Shows how fast Photos talks to iCloud, and whether iCloud's own queue is shrinking or going round in circles.
Where is my disk space going? For when Optimise Mac Storage is on but the library is not shrinking.

Reads the messages you never see

Log issues. Recent Photos, iCloud and crash messages, grouped and explained: a full disk, a full iCloud plan, a dropped network, a sign-in problem, a damaged library, a repair in progress, files Photos refused to import and more.
Live watch. Streams the messages as they happen, and shows the real file name, date and albums of the photo a message is about, not a long id.
Look up a photo from an id in a log, or part of a file name.
Migration receipt. A page you can share: what was done, how complete the metadata is, and what arrived in Photos and iCloud.

Fixes, in order

About 160 known problems

A built-in catalogue with the error codes and messages each one shows, the likely causes, and fixes to try, safest first. Covers iCloud, library, import, disk and drives, permissions and media.

17 fix guides

Step-by-step checklists: iCloud stuck or paused, “Unable to Upload”, ghost files, a library that will not open, copy error -36, a slow or hot Mac, shared albums and more. Each step says who does it: Photo Clinic, you, or a Terminal command you can copy.

Set it up for me

Where a problem has a matching tool, one button switches to it and sets the options. It always leaves Preview on, never presses Start, and has an undo.

Honest about its limits. Apple does not document the Photos database and it changes between macOS versions, so upload counts are a strong hint, not a guarantee. The problem catalogue is a draft: fixes beyond the safe steps are leads to check, and every entry carries a confidence level. Give Apple's servers days, not minutes, before deciding something is permanently stuck.

Look at your library for free

Download it, point it at your photos, and read the preview. That costs nothing and changes nothing.

Download for Mac

Free · Apple silicon Macs · signed and checked by Apple

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