Hi everyone,
I’m facing an issue with CloudKit sync getting stuck during initial device migration in my SwiftData-based app.
The app follows a local-first architecture using SwiftData + CloudKit sync, and works correctly for:
✔ Incremental sync
✔ Bi-directional updates
✔ Small datasets
However, when onboarding a new device with large historical data, sync becomes extremely slow or appears stuck. Even after two hours data is not fully synced. ~6900 Transactions
🚨 Problem
When installing the app on a new iPhone and enabling iCloud sync:
• Initial hydration starts
• A small amount of data syncs
• Then sync stalls indefinitely
Observed behaviour:
• iPhone → Mac sync works (new changes sync back)
• Mac → iPhone large historical migration gets stuck
• Reinstalling app / clearing container does not resolve issue
• Sync never completes full migration
This gives the impression that:
CloudKit is trickling data but not progressing after a certain threshold.
The architecture is:
• SwiftData local store
• Manual CloudKit sync layer
• Local-first persistence
• Background push/pull sync
So I understand:
✔ Conflict resolution is custom
✔ Initial import may not be optimized by default
But I expected CloudKit to eventually deliver all records.
Instead, the new device remains permanently in a “partial state”.
⸻
🔍 Observations
• No fatal CloudKit errors
• No rate-limit errors
• No quota issues
• iCloud is available
• Sync state remains “Ready”
• Hydration remains “mostlyReady”
Meaning:
CloudKit does not report failure — but data transfer halts.
⸻
🤔 Questions
Would appreciate guidance on:
Is CloudKit designed to support large initial dataset migration via manual sync layers?
Or is this a known limitation vs NSPersistentCloudKitContainer?
⸻
Does CloudKit internally throttle historical record fetches?
Could it silently stall without error when record volume is high?
⸻
Is there any recommended strategy for:
• Bulk initial migration
• Progressive hydration
• Forcing forward sync progress
⸻
Should initial migration be handled outside CloudKit (e.g. via file transfer / backup restore) before enabling sync?
⸻
🎯 Goal
I want to support:
• Large historical onboarding
• Multi-device sync
• User-visible progress
Without forcing migration to Core Data.
⸻
🙏 Any advice on:
• Best practices
• Debugging approach
• CloudKit behavior in such scenarios
would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Topic:
Programming Languages
SubTopic:
Swift
Tags:
Swift Packages
CloudKit
Swift
Cloud and Local Storage