I just built a new Windows 11 PC, and one of the things I wanted to use it for was to have an offline copy of all of my iCloud photos (total library size is about 1TB across 200k files) and be able to view them in the Windows Photos app.
So I installed iCloud for Windows, set it to sync my photo library, enabled the "Always keep on this device" option on the "iCloud Photos" folder, left it to do it's thing for a week or so, and now iCloud claims to have synced everything.
The first issue is that if I open the properties of my iCloud Photos folder, Windows reports the size on disk as only 9 MB. Is this because iCloud actually hasn't downloaded anything, or is Windows being clever here and not including the size of files that are also stored in the cloud (similar to what Mac OS handles purgeable space)? Is there any way that I can see what files have actually been downloaded?
The second issue is in the Windows Photos app. The iCloud Photos folder is shown there, but when I open it, no thumbnails are available, all of the pictures are just gray frames. Double-clicking to open one just gives a spinner animation. Shouldn't the Photos app at least generate thumbnails for all photos regardless of whether they have been downloaded? Most of the photos are JPG.
I'm not sure if I've configured something wrong or if I'm just expecting too much of the software with this size of library?
