I've looked through the history here and confirmed what I remembered - friends were only released 6 days ago (last Friday).
I'm seeing comments here (and hearing people at raids) complaining that they've been stuck at 6/7 days for 2 or 3 days...
This is day 6/7 since friends came out (depending on time zone). It shouldn't be possible to be great friends yet? Maybe if you got started on that first evening and never missed a day, you would hit it today.
So it's definitely not possible that you've been 1 day away for 3 days. If you see that, you were bugged "ahead"of your real status. Niantic is not slowing you down... They're bringing you where you should be?
What am I missing here? Were some people able to access friends before last Friday and just never bothered posting about it? The very first questions regarding friends (e.g. locked behind level 35 or 40) were posted here about 6d 12h ago...
The system is totally bugged. I've been great friends with a couple of people for two days now, while their status has been out of sync with mine. I think that for some reason progress is being pushed all onto one person, so they accelerate ahead while the other person stays put.
It's still an infuriating bug and it makes no sense why Niantic can't easily remedy it.
An earlier thread asking this question had a couple Reddit links explaining this.
From what I can tell it's exclusive to gift opening the cause of the failed updates. If trainer A opens a gift first then their status increases but not trainer B. If trainer B opens the gift first it syncs their friendship to the level of trainer A without increasing it.
I don't know /much/ about coding but it should be as simple as using an IF statement tied to a return value. Until then, it's best to have one side of the friendship lead the status and have the second friend sync up the day after the first friend reaches the next level.
Friends dropped on 6/21 for level 40. On that day, doing any activity took us to Good Friends with 6 days left. My spouse and I did that.
On 6/22, it went to 5 days left.
On 6/23, it went to 4 days left.
On 6/24, it went to 3 days left.
On 6/25, it went to 2 days left.
On 6/26, it went to 1 day left.
All this time, my spouse remained at 6 days left. And now I have been stuck at 1 day left for 3 days.
I got my first "Great Friend" today - for one of the 4-5 people I've been Raiding With/Gifting every day for the past 7 days. Three of those people are at "2 days till" Great Friend and the one is at "1 Day till" Great Friend. Those may or may not be out of synch with mine because it's been a slow raiding time, so I haven't actually seen some of them in 2 days. But I've been trading with/raiding with/gym battles with my Wife every day since we've been able, and her account has me listed as "3 days till" Great Friend while I have her listed as "1 Day till" Great Friend.
All of these people should be listed as "Great Friend" now, if the first one is - we all started at the same time. But only 1 of the 5 are "Great Friends".
It is programmed to only advance the friendship by 1 point each day. One player gaining friendship level should cause their friend's level to rise also. But it is bugged to give this progress only to the first person that performs a friend action each day. (The first player to open a gift, the first player to start the trade, or the first player to load into a raid or gym fight together.) After that, the other player can not gain a friend point that day.
If the first player to make a friendship action is ahead, they gain 1 point. If they are behind, then it bumps them up to meet the friend's points, but not gain any points for the day.
The most efficient method for gaining points is to organize one player to always open their gift first, then when they hit a friendship threshold to a higher rank let the other player open their gift first so they can jump up to match.
If you are not paying attention to who opens first, then it can take up to twice as long to progress.
