[Down (upload failed issue) again?] Google Drive stuck on uploading? Here’s workaround for ‘starting upload’ issue

New updates to this story are being added at the bottom…

Original story (from May 2019) follows:

Google Drive, well, this is one particular Google provided service, other than Gmail that I use most often, in fact on daily basis. It’s a good safe keeper, that too which offers a lot of functionalities – like easy accessibility, editing and storage – in one place. So bingo. It suits my work.

Keeping my personal preferences aside, most of the services have features/functionalities going haywire every now and then. And same is the case with even Google provided services like Drive.

Coming straight to the point, recently I stumbled upon on some complaints from Google Drive users talking about uploads stuck at ‘starting upload…’. Users basically report the progress bar doesn’t showing while uploading a video. Rather, it only notifies starting upload.

On digging in deep I could find so many users affected by this issue. They’ve been routing to different discussion platforms including the company’s official help forum, Reddit as well as Twitter, to bring the matter to light. Here’s how some of the complainants word the problem behavior:

Every time I try to upload a file, the loading bar cannot go past “Starting Upload”. I cleared my browsing history and that did nothing.

Am unable to upload a 74 MB mp4 video to Drive which I was able to do yesterday with a larger file. Dragging & Dropping the file to Drive causes it to post the msg “Starting upload …” but it proceeds no further, no matter how long I wait. HELP!

I have same problem too when try to upload 20mb file via google drive ‘the notif say ‘Starting to upload’ but when I used other cloud service upload speed is fine

Similar reports can be seen posted across micro-blogging site Twitter as well:

While initially it appeared the videos aren’t uploading only, some users cleared the picture by confirming if they leave the video at starting upload, it eventually does upload. But takes way longer than it actually should.

I’m having the same issue since yesterday, both on my pc and my laptop. It seems to uploads it, but it doesn’t show you the progress.

I have also been experiencing this same issue for the last week. On both my laptop and home computer almost overnight google drive stopped showing status of uploads and then when it finishes it ticks and goes straight to uploaded.

FYI both Windows and Mac users with Google Chrome browser appear to be are affected. Users have confirmed they face no such issue while uploading the same file in Google Drive using other browsers like Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer. So this could be a Google Chrome browser’s issue instead.

Anyway, coming to the workaround part, while disabling extensions helped a couple of users, the only workaround that appear to have resolved the issue for a lot of affected users is to upload the videos in Incognito mode (or hide window).

I have the same Issue. For me going incognito mode hotfixed the problem.
In normal mode uploads don’t show a progress bar and also take forever.

So if you are also facing this issue lately, you can give the workaround a try. Rest assured, we are keeping a tab and will upload the story as and when any other relevant development comes to our notice.

We are again seeing reports (1,2) of a Google Drive outage of sorts which users say is affecting their uploads. We’re keeping a close watch on the matter, and will update the story as and we get an official confirmation or come across any newsworthy development.

For now, Google doesn’t say if there’s any outage. Check here and here.

The G Suite status dashboard now shows both Gmail and Google Drive as experiencing service disruptions.

Update 4 (August 20, 2020)

Google server status page now says Google Docs, Google Meet, and Google Voice are also experiencing issues.

P.S. For more Google-related news and stories you may head here.

Follow @PiunikaWeb

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.