iCloud Drive is stuck uploading items and no longer syncs

I got the macOS Sierra update when it went into public beta, and I've been trying to use the automatic Desktop / Documents upload feature with iCloud Drive.

I've enabled the feature, however since September 7 no files have been uploaded. By this point, the bottom of my Finder windows say:

15.78 GB available on iCloud, uploading 156,106 items (543.2 MB of 543.2 MB)

However the files are never actually uploaded. I keep my screenshots folder on my desktop and I take a lot of screenshots, so I can see that September 7 was the last date any file was actually uploaded.

What should I do? Is there a way I can disable and re-enable the feature without risking loss of data? Are there any solutions to this problem? What should I try? So far I've tried rebooting, and tried software update to macOS 10.12.2 public beta.

do not forget that osx is based on unix. what helped me is changing of 'bird' process priority ('bird' process is responsible for icloud replication).

1. Double click on ☁️ iCloud icon in finder to see progress.

2. Go to Terminal

3. ps aux | grep bird.

You will see your bird process id, in my case it is 815.

serg               815  98.8  0.8  4542828 137776   ??  U    Thu09PM 2047:53.94 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CloudDocsDaemon.framework/Versions/A/Support/bird

4. Check current priority of bird process

ps -fl -C 815

(Replace 815 on your bird process id from step 3). If you never changed it before, it will be 0 (under NI column, but formatting of output is not nice).

5. Change priority (negative numbers are high priority, based on research -20 is the highest, but do not put it, I suggest to put -10) to do it.

sudo renice -n -10 -p 815

(again replace 815 on your bird process id from step 3). It will ask for password if you are not root currently in terminal.

6. If it worked, you should see progress in the iCloud progress dialog you opened on step 1. I cannot guarantee it will work always, as iCloud is blackbox. Unfortunately i.e. mac has a unix core, but all above it is blackbox proprietary software

Happened to me as well, here is what I did:

1. Back up all items in the Documents and Desktop folders
2. Open up System Preferences
3. Click on iCloud
4. Click on Options next to iCloud Drive
5. If Desktop and Document Folders is disabled, enable it
6. If it enabled, un-enable it.
7. Uncheck the Optimize Mac Storage and click Done
8. Redo the opposite of this to re-enable iCloud
9. Move all Documents and Desktop items back to their respective area.

It is helpful to note if you are experiencing sync issues in any of the other categories in iCloud Drive, try disabling them and then re-enabling them.

Have you changed the date and time on your computer or phone? This is a possible explanation of why iCloud is not syncing.

Be careful, this method will Delete the files. Managed to solve it by:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Select iCloud
3. Untick iCloud
4. At the prompt select Remove from Mac
5. At the next prompt select Stop Updating and turn off

Should be fixed, worked for me, really annoying

Second scenario that worked, on iPhone:

1. Open Settings
2. iCloud Drive
3. Manage Storage
4. Click on the folder that's at fault and remove it from iCloud