Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

iTunes 10 not Syncing Photos to iPhone 4

After downloading iTunes 10 and syncing my phone, all of my photo albums are gone, except for the camera roll.

In the photos tab in iTunes, it shows that I have selected to sync specific albums and several are checked, but none show up on the phone after sync! Please help!

iMac, MBA, Mac OS X (10.4.10), iPhone 4

Posted on Sep 2, 2010 12:45 PM

Reply
30 replies

Sep 3, 2010 9:42 AM in response to Joe Maloney1

I have this issue too, and it's frustrating. Did a restore, then sync'd photos. It worked. But after fully reloading all my content, it still fails with not enough space (trying to sync 1 50k image, with 2GB free).

Do you have the 'convert to 128 bit' turned on? I wonder if the calculation for that is broken, and it thinks there isn't enough space?

Sep 4, 2010 2:39 PM in response to 1 Open Loop

I don't use iPhoto - syncing a folder. I've been through tier-2 support with Apple. It's a bug in iTunes, where it incorrectly calculates free space - appears to be using the original file sizes, not the shrunk ones when you downsample to 128.

A full uninstall/reinstall of itunes didn't fix it, neither did a full restore (I can sync photos until I put the music on, then the calculation breaks again). It's a bug.

Oct 5, 2010 8:43 PM in response to lhotka

Just wanted to chime in you guys. I recently had this problem where i was trying to sync the photos and from folders i select like usual and noticed it just gets stuck at importing photos. Checked and one person pointed us here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1314

Well im in windows but found the folder in My Pictures. Deleted it and that fixed my problem. FOR NOW ATLEAST.

Apple, fix this bug please! Atleast I found a fix but who knows how long it works!

Nov 16, 2010 5:26 PM in response to Joe Maloney1

nothing of what was suggested here works for me. I use adobe bridge not iPhoto for my pictures. I just have them in a regular Pictures folder in my finder. I keep deleting the "ipod photo cache" and when I sync my iphone 3g the sync creates the folder again I have 6 of them in my trash and this is after i emptied the trash with 4 of them in there it just keeps creating the folder. It's so frustrating. Please help.

Nov 21, 2010 5:51 PM in response to Joe Maloney1

Had this problem too, "file not found" message when it got to the photo stage of syncing.

Tried the -reset iSync and adding new images/albums- method but the problem persisted. Also I was unwilling to go for the iTunes reinstall as my library is pretty fragmented and was worried I'd lose my phone backup/sync settings.

In the end I went into the iPhoto library (this is on a mac so ctrl-click and "show package contents") and I got rid of the "iPod Photo Cache" folder (I merely changed the name first just in case it didn't work, but best to make sure your iPhoto Library is backed up first) when I synced my phone after this iTunes created a new cache folder a re-processed all the pictures for the phone.

Note, I had the last 12 months of events/albums selected so the initial sync took 20-30 minutes for iTunes to resize all the photos but now everything's back to normal on the phone.

hope this helps.

Aug 30, 2011 8:36 AM in response to Joe Maloney1

I am having the same issue... and have tried everything from deleting my ipod cache to deleting the plist file to rebuilding my iPhoto library to creating a whole new library, exporting out of the old and importing into the new.


I am getting a seemingly random number of photos that transfer over to my iPhone and iPad, but it's not taking all of them.


The photos show up in the iTunes sync window but I get the error that it won't sync them because it can't display them. The photos all used to sync properly and many of the ones that won't sync were shot with my iPhone.


Is there any chance that the issue could lie with iTunes and not iPhoto?


Running iTunes 10.4.1 (10)

iPhone 4 and iPad 2 running latest iOS

Apr 23, 2012 4:58 AM in response to Joe Maloney1

I'm not sure if this will help or hinder the debate - its my story....


I upgraded to iPad 3 or whatever it's called and had the same issues as the rest of you. Photos would not sync - 10 photos would go across and then without warning or error messages it would stop. I tried many things and read this forum. I sat down to try deleting caches and some of the other tricks in here that you have tried. I connected the iPad to iTunes thinking that I would tell it to stop syncing photos and so on.


You can guess what happened next - yes, it quietly sat there and synced all photos happily as though there had never been a problem. I have 2,500 photos ranging in size up to about 6.5MB that had no problem syncing to iPad 1 and iPhone. Now I have them on ipad3 too.


I see that they are not in the same order but I'm not going to worry about that. I hadn't "woken up" the iPad before the sync but it's hard to think that could be the silver bullet you're looking for. Thanks for all the helpful ideas in here and I hope that next time you connect up it works for you too.

iTunes 10 not Syncing Photos to iPhone 4

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.