iCloud for Mac is stuck on "waiting to upload"

I'm in the same situation. Right now my iMac is not syncing to other devices.

I have the exact same situation: iCloud with sync for my Desktop/Document folders and regular git usage. The upload is stuck. I called Apple Support. First stop was iCloud support, who said it seems to be a MacOS issue. I was forwarded to MacOS support, who said that it needs to be upgraded. I got Andrew, a senior support person in MacOS, who spent 3 hours with me, gathering various diagnostic information. He will be upgrading it to the engineering team. I will update what happens after talking to them.

Any updates on this? I just got my new M1 Macbook Air with Big Sur and I am also experiencing this issue. Cannot get my iCloud Desktop and Documents to sync in any direction.

I'm in the same situation. Created some documents and saved to iCloud, but it still says waiting .... any clues?

I'm having the same issue with my new M1 MacBook Air. Desktop and Documents doesn't sync, at all and most other documents in iCloud aren't available in finder. what gives?

Looks like this problem is widespread. And still hasn't been figured out by Apple going on months. Got my 13" M1 MBP Wednesday and no matter what I do, it just won't sync files to iCloud (I tried all the stuff they take you through). Friend of mine has the M1 Air...same exact issues, completely different ISP.

Over the last few years, I've trusted iCloud to store my production files. And even though I did plenty of backups before this test, it looks like the M1 is going to be a $2K test machine. Like many of you, I'm going to watch them work out the bugs and hopefully do so before they release their flame thrower 16" next year. I want to love this chip, but the last 2 days have been a bumpy ride or crashes (photos, Photoshop Beta, Creative Cloud--crash crash crash) here and there and some questionable performance/flickering connected to my BenQ monitor. A couple times Safari wouldn't come back after minimizing and I have to open a new window.

I'm keeping track of everything to report in. Hope you guys are having a better experience other than the iCloud sync.
My 15" MBP is standing by for the real work until all this smoothes out.

This just started happening to me (or maybe it was happening all along and I didn't notice), but I was trying to backup a Final Cut Pro library to my iCloud Drive, and waited days with no data actually being transmitted. Watched the activity monitor. Turned iCloud Drive, desktop/documents on and off. Tried to move a file from my other MacBook to the same iCloud Drive and now nothing will sync. The only thing I touched was the "optimize Mac storage" I turned it off, because I noticed it was downloading stuff to my local machine that I didn't want there, I wanted it kept up in the cloud storage, so I figured I would just manage it manage by using right-click "remove download". That is when I noticed this happened. So I put it back to default, turned iCloud off and on again, and still it's stuck. Paying for 2TB of data that I can't use!

I also experienced the problem with storing some git repositories on iCloud Drive. I call these files "ghost" files because the cloud icon is drawn with a dashed line. According to Apple these are files that are waiting to be uploaded to iCloud Drive.

Here's what solves it for me though I am still researching a way to resolve it programmatically - i.e. navigating through the file system to detect these ghost files and then perform my process to get them uploaded.

On the Mac I simply use Finder and navigate to the folder containing the ghost file that is waiting to upload. I right click and select the Compress command to create a .zip file of that ghost file. In only one case this was enough to trigger the uploading of the original since the ghost icon disappeared. In every other case it was not enough.

In these other cases I would wait until the cloud outline disappears from the zip version of the original file - indicating it's been synced to iCloud Drive on the server. Then I delete the ghost file. Finally I unzip the zip file and it recreates the ghost file and nearly every time it syncs to iCloud Drive. If the zip file doesn't sync after a few seconds you could delete it and try it again. I had to do this once.

If you want to be even more cautious you can unzip the compressed file and then check the contents against the ghost file. Once confirmed they match then just delete the original file as well as the .zip file and then rename the uncompressed one since it will have a " 2' added to the name.

I've now done this about 40 times over the past few days while doing a lot of git repository synchronizations. It's a pain but it's never not worked.

The real solution would be a utility script that could look for these ghost files in a hierarchy, like via the "find ." command, and then trigger this zip process. Unfortunately it would have to wait to conduct a second pass to make sure all the zip files have been uploaded before it would delete the problem files and then unzip the backups. Finally, it would have to do a third pass to confirm all the unzipped replacement files have been synced to iCloud Drive.

ditto, many many files stuck on waiting to upload. But I don't have a new one, I have a 2014 MacBook Air. So I think it's to do with the OS rather than the machine.

Same problem here my 2020 Mac Mini M1. I've logged out of and logging back into my Apple ID account (multiple times). I've disabled and re-enabled my iCloud Drive (multiple times). I've even reinstalled macOS Big Sur. Two weeks ago I spent an hour + via Apple Care chat with no resolution. I'm convinced it's a software issue affecting certain Macs. I hope Apple finds a fix and soon. It's frustrating as hell that I can upload documents or see my iCloud Drive docs from my other devices.

I am also facing the same issue and can't believe that it's a bug and apple would have allowed to stay there for so long. I think there's a config issue or something common between us which we have not yet discovered. I use a 2012 iMac. Let's check other common things.

I finally figured out a solution to this! It's annoying to do, but if you compress (zip) the folders/files that are stuck, it seems to kick the icloud upload into activation. You have to start at the lowest level of the folder that's in limbo, so for example:

if Master Folder contains Subfolder, compress Subfolder and delete the expanded folder. iCloud should start to actively upload the compressed folder. Once completed, you can expand the zipped folder again, it will upload, and you can delete the compressed version. Then repeat the process for Master Folder. The deeper your folder structure goes for the files that are stuck, the longer this process takes, but at least it gets that "waiting to upload" notification to go away!

Thanks bagelbite!! That did the trick for me!!

I have the same problem: iCloud Drive for Mac is stuck on "waiting to upload", not only on Documents or Desktop folders. My Mac is an Intel MacbookPro (not M1!) from 2019 (16 inch). OS: Big Sur (11.2.3).

So I was facing the same issues. Make sure you update you OS. Restart. go to system preferences and toggle iCloud and resend all the file restart your computer this should do the trick.

No upload since January this year.
When I take a picture on my mobile phone it gets synced to my macbook pro but since January no file was uploaded to iCloud from my macbook pro this year. According to System Preferences / Apple ID / iCloud Drive, there are still 66 GB storage available.
I am unsure if I should disable and enable iCloud Drive since the following warning is displayed. "If you turn off iCloud Drive, all documents stored in iCloud will be removed from this Mac."

For me signing-in and out of iCloud on my macbook pro did not help. The result was that the iCloud Drive folder is now empty and everything is saved to iCloud Drive (Archive). If I add a file to iCloud Drive it is not uploaded but stuck in "Waiting to Upload".
Maybe it is related to the macOS Big Sur update.
I would try if resetting / reinstalling helps but then I would loose all changes since January which are not yet uploaded.
I'm a bit surprised there was no warning that all my files were not synced for 3 months.

Maybe apple is working on it.

Update: One night after signing-in and out of my iCloud account, many files got synced to my computer from iCloud but nothing got uploaded.
I checked the logs of the cloudd process with "log stream --process <cloudd PID>" but found nothing helpful. There is one message "cloudd: (CloudKit) CloudKit SQLite Pool Drain" which appears often and which captured my interest but I found nothing on google about it.

There is a potential reason for iCloud being stuck in "waiting to upload". Some month ago, maybe around the time iCloud stopped uploading, I worked on a github repository which was included in a iCloud subfolder. My computer van was making lots of noise and then I realized iCloud was having problems syncing many changes, for example after every compilation. So I moved the repository out of the iCloud folder which makes sense since it is already backed up at github.
Maybe iCloud never recoverd from that.

Because of Bagelbite's comment I thought of the node_modules folder needed for Angular projects. There's a simple solution to stop trying to push those folders to iCloud Drive. Add .nosync to the folder name. I did this and added an alias folder that links to the nosync folder so the project will still build. This fixed my issues and my iCloud Drive is completely in sync with my other devices now.

I found a GitHub project that automatically adjusts your node_modules folders, bit more efficient.

https://github.com/HaoChuan9421/nosync-icloud/blob/master/docs/README_en.md

Hope this helps!

I was able to stop "waiting to upload" by dragging all the files out of the problem folder to the desktop. I deleted the problem folder. I added the folder back to the desktop. I drug each file and folders back into the folder one by one to find the problem folder. If I found another problem folder a drug all those files to the desktop one by one and then deleted the old folder and then created a new folder and drug the files and folders back into the new folder.

Not sure why it is working so far?

Maybe, the Desktop & Document Folder is the cause of the issue.
I tried not to include 'Desktop & Document Folder' on the iCloud, then upload and download works normally.

I just started seeing this problem on my MacBook Air M1 too. I am looking for advice as are many others (waiting to upload).

May 2021
still have this problem

I wish APPLE would answer this know issue - I'm experiencing the same thing too. There is a Folder on my Desktop too that says "waiting to upload" --according to what I have read here on this topic, it has been a known issue for months and Apple does not seem to be willing to address it. Seems also that it could be a Google Chrome/Drive compatibility conflict. Getting tired of all these different platforms not playing nice with each other -- is it not us, the CONSUMER, who have already paid in one way or another for these so-called services?
Very frustrating!

This is what worked for me (Big Sur, iCloud upload from 2013 MacBook Pro to 2013 iMac STUCK). I, first, did one last backup of my iMac data on Time Machine to an external hard drive. I signed out of iCloud from the iMac. That erased my desktop folders on the iMac but the documents were still present in the iMac's document's folder. Next I signed back into the iCloud on the iMac. The desktop folders reappeared and, in Finder, those folders showed the download icon next to each subfolder and file within the subfolders. I clicked on the icon of each desktop file (within the subfolders, about 500) which brings up a small window showing the progress downloading each file. I clicked only 1-2 files at a time (PDFs and audio files) to follow the download progress. This may sound tedious but the maneuver worked so far (performed 1 week ago) and, since, I have confirmed that newly-made files are uploading and downloading normally.