Okay, for me what fixed it is, sign out and back into iCloud on the Mac. Then in the options of iCloud Drive in preferences, besides the checkmarks for Documents and Desktop, and various apps, there was a pleonastic entry called iCloud Drive. Ticking that made everything sync and work again.
Having said that, I think Apple should remove that inner tick mark and assume the user wants to use iCloud Drive if they ticked the root level iCloud Drive check mark within the iCloud settings. Otherwise that leads users to confusion!
Here is the solution that 100% worked for me:
Boom, problem solved: iCloud corrupted cache is gone and files/folder start syncing from scratch and every cloud icon next to folders / files is gone!
For me what worked is shutting down (Macbook Air 2021 M1) then booting into Safe Mode. After a minute the stuck uploads/downloads cleared out as they normally should.
Simply find the folder in icloud and right click on the icloud icon and click on "download now".
Just noticed today that my files were stuck on "waiting to upload" when I was working on someone else's computer and went to icloud.com to download a file. Wow - iCloud is not a trustworthy way to back up files, apparently! Using Big Sur also. I have a call with Apple today and will report back.
Old Macbook MacOS Monterey 12.6.1 did a Target-disk transfer via thunderbold. New Macbook MacOS Ventura 13.2.1 - iCloud drive (all enabled)
Issue: iCloud sync not uploading some files. (Sync-icon with an exclamation in its center.
a Last sync status: There are items to sync. (takes a while to show this message)
Tried: iCloud sync on another new user-account on the same system. Fully syncs with correct status. Both the Old and new Macbook had the issue after I tranfered/migrated the mac.
What did the trick,
sudo killall bird; sudo rm -rf /Users/arno/Library/Application\ Support/CloudDocs; sudo killall bird
also used some commands for seeing what happens: ps aux | grep bird ; ls -alh ~/Library/Application\ Support/CloudDocs/
At first it did not list any new files, did another killall bird.. and file where created.
After this it starts a full-resync of the iCloud drive, it shows a progress-counter and ## GB of 130GB.
It still froze, I used the macbook as usual, after safe-mode reboot and couple reboots it started working.
Boot in safe-mode clears some old system/log-files it also fixed some slow file-copy problems
(boot safe-mode: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac )
I had the same issue except all my files disappeared anyone know how to get them back or whatnot ?
2023-03-13 | MacBook Pro | MacOS Monterey 12.6.3
Problem: Desktop folder and files disappeared (after logging out and then back in to my Apple-ID account).
Solution: Settings -> Apple-ID -> iCloud -> iCloud Drive (check-marked) -> Alternative -> added a check-mark to "Folders Desktop and Documents".
All my desktop folders and files reappeared!
Cheers, Peter
Apart from Compressing the files or folder , i have found another solve. Just upload the files or folder to icloud drive and stay on that icloud drive page for sometime and it will eventually upload.
Yeah, I haven’t been able to move my work in my Files App and sync to my iCloud for a few days. It’s a lot of money to have these kinds of issues.
i made sure to have my cellular data/Wi-Fi settings functioning, turned my cell on/off, YouTube researched, nothing.
it feels silly and helpless.
are there any solutions to troubleshoot this that are guaranteed or is this a continuous connection error?
Drag the folder out of the iCloud folder onto your desktop. Re-drag it back to the iCloud folder. Done. Your welcome.
I have this issue for years and it happens all the time. There is no way to find out which files or folders bird is stuck on.
I have around 1 TB of data in my iCloud Drive and the last time I killed the CloudDocs folder (as mentioned here as a possible solution) it took 40 hours until the files even appeared in my iCloud Drive! I cannot afford that.
Apple, you can do so many amazing things, but a basic file sync is too heavy to lift?
Happened to me yesterday. I cannot find who wrote this solution. But it is working just now.
"EMPTY your bin"
it will just do the trick!
I am totally frustrated. In the past two years, I never got my icloud drive cmpletely synced. It always says "pending item to sync".
I tried a lot of ways. Remove all files. Factory reset my mac and start a fresh sync.... etc. Most of them only work a few days but then stop working right again.
Most likely some fundamental files system logic is wrong.
I paid for 200G icloud. I can't image who can store 200G with such slow and problematic syncing ?