Apple iCloud photos not being displayed due to iCloud exceeding 30 second timeout

[sean-rose]

Describe the bug I use an Apple iCloud shared photo album for the background of my DAKboard, but more often than not recently the photos haven't been displayed, leaving a blank black background on the DAKboard. I found recent issue #1953 where the timeout for waiting for a response from iCloud was increased to 30 seconds, but in testing today I found iCloud was taking around 50 seconds to display the shared photo album (similar to what @Dan-Peck found in #1953).

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. View my DAKboard.
2. See no background photo.

Expected behavior A background photo should be displayed from the configured Apple iCloud shared photo album.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: DAKOS
• Version: 2.17

Additional context IMO the timeout should be increased further to 60 seconds given the recent performance of Apple iCloud shared photo albums.

[cocarrig]

Hi @sean-rose,

Unfortunately keeping connections open on our side to wait even longer will negatively impact the performance of the DAKboard infrastructure as a whole, and is well past the length of time most clients are willing to wait.

We have seen some success from clients if they create a new album in icloud and link the replacement album instead. Let us know if this helps get you back up and running.

[carydrew]

@cocarrig are there any other workarounds? The suggestion you mentioned worked for me once but now it is no longer working.

[cocarrig]

@carydrew Some apple users have seen that if they create a new album and publish it, that it will load faster and fix the issue. If that is possible I would highly suggest trying that.

[omatzyo]

I’m also having this same problem. Creating new albums does not help.

[cocarrig]

Hi @omatzyo,

We released some changes today that can improve these results under certain conditions where a redirection or host change has occurred. Try again and let us know if this has improved. If you are still encountering timeouts, we would suggest giving another photos integration a try if you are open to using them (Google Photos, DropBox, Flickr, etc)

[omatzyo]

No change for me unfortunately. The iCloud album is slow to spin up when I load it on its own, so I think it’s just timing out. I have other shared albums that load instantly but any new albums (even with different picture sets - even 1 or 2) are very very slow to load. I wonder if others are having iCloud issues as well. Clearly not the fault of dakboard, but frustrating nonetheless.

I started using Flickr and it’s working. It just makes for a more cumbersome workflow.

[cocarrig]

@omatzyo

Sorry to hear that didn't help your specific instance. Unfortunately Apple doesn't seem to interested in addressing this at the moment, hopefully that will change in the near future.