Google Photos stuck at 'Preparing Backup'

I was quite excited when launched Google Photos yesterday. It is enhanced version of Google+ Photos, which was quite impressive with features like auto awesome, search etc.

The most compelling feature of Google Photos at least for me isn’t the fact that Google was offering unlimited data storage . If you read the fine print, it is not free if you want to keep the original version of the photos. The most compelling feature is that Google Photos automatically organizes photos by the people, places, things etc. It saves you the time of creating albums.

The fact that Google Photos is standalone, and not linked to Google+ makes it even more compelling.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get it to work. When I go to the Assistant screen, it tells me it is “Preparing backup”, and has finished “Catching up with everything!” but it doesn’t seem to start the upload process. I also don’t see the cloud icon, which is an indication that the photo hasn’t been uploaded yet. It means that the photos have been uploaded, but when I go to http://photos.google.com I can’t find the photos. I’ve tried the basic troubleshooting steps, but it still has helped in fixing the issue.

 

I initially thought it was because I was using iCloud Photo Library  with the option to “Optimise iPhone Storage” enabled (Settings > iCloud > Photos). But switching back to “Download and Keep Originals” did not resolve the issue.

Then it was because I am using iCloud Photo Library, but that doesn’t seem to be the case as other users have been able to upload photos to Google Photos with iCloud Photo Library and “Optimise iPhone Storage” option enabled. I tried disabling iCloud Photo Library as well, but it still did not solve the issue. Though it seems to have worked for some users [1] .

I am also able to use the Carousel app to upload photos and videos to Dropbox with these same iCloud Photo Library settings, so it ideally shouldn’t be a requirement. I seem to have hit a bug which is preventing photos to be uploaded to Google servers from my iPhone. Based on a quick search on Twitter, it looks like a number of readers are facing this problem.

What about you? Did you try Google Photos? What has been your experience?

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Links

1. ^{^} users (www.sstanhill.com)

source: www.iphonehacks.com