Photos is horrific for this. No progress, no indicators. And what little status you get has no connection to reality.
Will it sync? When? Who knows? You’re on WiFi with a full battery and charging? So? Might be a minute, might be an hour. Oh, you restarted Photos? Who cares? Not Photos.
Agree that new Photos is abysmal compared to what it was before. And that's before the macOS only features that you don't know are macOS only features (like naming photos! Seriously!)
There's a lot of arcane lore about how to get it to sync. Closing all applications, restarting, then starting photos, then hiding the photos main window, then waiting, was how I got it to work last time. It worked twice, YMMV. If there's a cli alternative, please tell me.
You're not saying it, but ugh, yeah, anything along those lines of magic incantations and this is all the very antithesis of what Apple claims to embody.
Will it sync? When? Who knows? You’re on WiFi with a full battery and charging? So? Might be a minute, might be an hour. Oh, you restarted Photos? Who cares? Not Photos.