iOS 13 Photos sync through iTunes causes duplicate photos on iOS devices

All right guys -

I have been in a remote wilderness since I last posted here, so I took a while to get back to troubleshooting this, but wanted to tell everyone that I fixed this problem today, and it took very little effort!

I figured that the issue had to be with my Photos app on the laptop, and not with the phone, or with the new Finder sync. I have all of my photos (22,000) organized perfectly into folders of where each was taken. All of those folders are in Finder on my mac, and are in Albums in Photos. I sync everything from Photos to my phone (versus syncing directly from the folders in Finder). When I look at each of the 100 or so Albums that I have in Photos (under the Albums>My Albums menu on the left), there are NO DUPLICATES AT ALL in any of the albums. They are all exactly how I wanted them to be on my phone...BUT, when I click on Library>Photos on the left I see thousands of duplicate and triplicate photos. They only appear there, NOT in any of the Albums that I created and thought that I was syncing.

I got this app from the App Store today:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photos-duplicate-cleaner/id592704001?mt=12&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

And I carefully followed these instructions on how to use it:

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/02/15/how-to-remove-duplicate-photos-on-mac/

It found that I had over 22,000 duplicated and triplicated photos. They ONLY show up in the Library>Photos section of Photos though, which is what your phone is using when is syncs.

After deleting all of the duplicates, I synced my phone again and it went from having 47,000 photos on it, to having 22,000. No more duplicates.

Hope this works for the rest of you. This wasn't a macOS Catalina issue, nor was it an iOS issue. It was an issue with Photos having thousands of duplicates, seemingly from me not importing them correctly when I did it.

I finally fixed this today. I deleted my entire Photos library on my Mac. I then turned on iCloud Photos on my iPhone so that it would delete all of the photos on my phone. I then changed the source of the sync in Finder from Photos, to the Pictures Folder on my Mac, so that it syncs the original photos and completely bypasses the Photos App.

It worked 100% flawlessly. Zero duplicates and the entire sync of 22,000 photos took only 45 minutes.

I triple checked and there isn’t one duplicate photo on my phone. The culprit is using the Photos app as the source rather than simply syncing the original photos from finder.

There’s only one downside to this method; you can’t pick the cover photo for your synced albums when you do it this way.

There's no point in updating to Catalina; the problem happens there, too. And for that matter, it's been reported in this thread that the problem also exists syncing photos from Windows PCs. So the conclusion is that the problem is not with any computer operating system, it's with iOS 13.x itself. And you're far from the first user to get the runaround from Apple Tech on this issue, so I think it's becoming obvious that a fix won't be coming soon, maybe not until iOS 14 is released... if even then. For now, the only real solutions with iOS 13 are either: 1) repeatedly resetting Photo sync to "off" and then turning it back "on" (as you've described); or 2) turning on iCloud Photo Library, paying Apple's monthy surcharge for extra storage if needed, and letting iCloud handle all photo syncing automatically. You can still do music syncs and backups the same way you're currently doing; only your photo syncing would be handled by Apple... and with no more duplicates on your iPhone or iPad.

I hate to play the villain here, but after struggling with all those same sync issues long before, and certainly ever since iOS 13 and Catalina came out, I do just want to report that all these problems go away if iCloud Photos is used. Since I switched to Apple's Cloud my photo albums are perfectly synced, with no duplicates, and all the People I've carefully identified as "Faces" on my Mac are identically recognized on my iPhone and iPad. Newly added or edited photos automatically sync almost instantly. And if I do choose to do a manual sync in Catalina Finder, the process only takes minutes instead of hours because photos no longer have to be transferred. As Apple used to say, "It just works."

Yes, it's great in principle that other users resist the Cloud and keep trying to get Apple to fix its old, free procedures that have broken along the way. But sometimes in life you can choose your battles, and paying a tiny fee to avoid this particular struggle and enjoy some peace has thus far proven to me to be very much worth 99 cents a month.

FWIW, automatically-synced editing is one of the best features of iCloud Photos. Adding or deleting a photo, along with cropping, rotating, making lighting changes, etc., on any one of your devices is immediately changed on all of them, including in the Mac Photos application. None of the "This photo is not editable, do you want to Duplicate and Edit" messages any more.

That said, there are a few things I *don't* like about iCloud Photos, after I switched to it a few weeks back: 1) ALL photos and albums are synced across all my devices; I can't individually select the ones to sync like I could with iTunes (or in the Catalina Finder); 2) I opted to download all high-resolution originals on all my devices, because my entire photo library is only about 20 Gb and I have plenty of room for it on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. But for some reason I do notice a slight lag (usually a pop-up that says "Downloading...") if for instance I attach a photo to an email on a device other than the one that took the photo in the first place. I'm really not sure if the high-resolution photos come in on the other devices until they're needed or opened, but with highspeed broadband that delay isn't much of a problem.

All of my other issues: the duplicate photos on iOS13, missing-key person photos, the strange "People from my Mac" album vs the regular "People" album on my iOS13 devices, the super-long sync times from my Mac, and the neverending "Syncing..." message at the bottom of my iOS13 photo albums... all those went away with my switch to iCloud Photos. It's not perfect but for me, eliminating all those hassles was worth the few disadvantages, and the 99 cents I pay each month to free up all the time and frustration I experienced before the switch.

I participated in similar forums when Apple released Mojave OS 10.14, whose requirement for Metal support made many of my company's older Mac Pro's permanently un-updateable; and again, when a different forum actually sent an e-signed petition to Tim Cook, asking him to end an apparent standoff with NVIDIA over its video drivers. Both forums raged for months (and, now, for years) without movement from Apple on the respective issues. I know how frustrating and seemingly unfair it is for a capability to suddenly be broken or removed without an apparent solution. Whether this iOS13 syncing problem joins the graveyard of these other lost causes remains to be seen, but Apple's track record of addressing any of them isn't very encouraging... especially when it offers alternative tech that apparently solves the problem as it shifts gears toward the future.

Hi, I had this issue too. I solved this matter by

1. Deleting all sync photos from my iPhone 11 Pro Max (ios 13.6.1)
2. Deleting "iPod photo cache" in the sync folder.
3. Restart PC (Win 8.1, iTunes 12.10.8.5) and iphone.
4. Restart sync with iphone on airplane mode with no interactions with PC till sync completes.

I think I may have the fixit for this problem...I too was getting very frustrated and the doubling up of the photos when I sync my PC to my iPhone or iPad Pro. And Yes, it seems to be most prevalent since IOS 13, except if you look back at the history this problem has been occurring for many years.

My fixit seems to work, have been trialling it all day and so far zero duplicates have been loaded.

First of all I removed all the photos previously synced on my iphone and iPad.

I then deleted the iPod Photo Cache in my Photos Directory.

I then set up my iPhone and iPad to sync via WiFi.

Reloaded the photos a few thousand at a time.

(However, another oddball situation is when it is resyncing it often seems to delete several hundred photos and reload them - not sure if this is intentional by apple to maintain fresh copies or not).

This method appears to work and I must admit that syncing via WiFi is something I had not tried before, but it does seem faster than syncing with a cable - especially on my old iPad Pro (Series 1).

Hope this helps.

I have solved my problem, but it will not be to everyone’s choice. I removed all the gps data from my photos. (Longitude, Latitude and elevation). This solved the problem - or at least it has for the past 6 days.

I know it is a bit drastic. But I always keep original copies of my photos on a separate drive. So the information is still available if I want to look it up.

I don’t think this will be fixed any time soon.

I used the windows 10 “Remove personal data” on the properties to achieve this. You can do batches providing they all have GPS data. Note:- Screen shots etc (PNG) do not have, so sort your photos into ‘file type’ first, then block them all and remove.

Looks like Apple not going to fix this problem (they didn't fix it on ios13betas even), and it means we have to survive with this somehow. As many here, I have the same problem (I don't believe in icloud sync, so I prefer to sync my new photos from Iphone to iphoto library (with "delete on iphone after sync", and then sync my iphoto library back to iphone.

And my way around this restriction is uncheck "sync all photos" and sync just one album. It's killing all my previous synced photos on iphone. But then I have to check "sync all photos" again, and it works. It takes more time, but this is the way for me now, until Apple fix it.

I've been getting the location-based duplication problem on successive syncs, too. It's limited to maybe 10% of my 5,300 photos, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to which ones get duplicated. After syncing, one photo on the iOS device may indicate a generic neighborhood or town name, but its duplicate indicates a much more specific location such as "Home" or the name of the exact landmark where the photo was taken. To fix the issue, I maintain a 1-picture auxilliary Photo Library on my Mac which I switch to as the System Photo Library in Photos preferences. I sync my iOS device to that tiny library (letting the sync remove all photos from my iOS device) , then switch the System Photo Library back to my usual large library, and re-sync. At the end of all that, I do get photos properly sync'ed without duplicates, which lasts at least until the next sync or the sync after that. Then the problem recurs and I have to re-do the routine. It's definitely annoying, time-consuming and, needless to say, I now only sync after amassing enough new photos to justify the effort.

I would definitely hope that leaving this problem unresolved isn't a deliberate decision by Apple, to force users to switch to iCloud. More likely, it's a matter of old technology (i.e., manual syncing) being inadvertently broken by an update (i.e., iOS 13), and the Apple Tech people not being trained to handle malfunctions with that older technology. Tech companies don't have the financial resources to indefinitely support applications and operating systems as they age; even Microsoft recently dropped support of Windows 7, for example. Whether that's a good practice or a bad one is open to debate but it's the reality of current tech.

That said, this past weekend I did decide to test out iCloud Photos. By holding down the "Option" key as I launched the Photos app on my Mac, I was able to create a fresh Photo Library (still keeping my original one safely stored away, intact). I then imported a few photos (about 100), organized them into albums, manually identified a few people ("Faces"), edited the photos, etc. Everything I tried was immediately updated on my iPhone and iPad with no action whatsoever needed on my part. Likewise, I edited and deleted and added photos on my iPhone, created new albums on the iPhone, etc.... and again, everything immediately synchronized both on my iPad and on my Mac.

Obviously, I'll have to start paying Apple if I keep adding new photos (or if I switch back to my old Photos Library and its 70 GB of contents go up to iCloud). Do I like paying for something I previously got for free? No... but my time is worth something, too, and the hours of work this will save me in the future justifies the $36 or so I'll spend each year to save that time.

The reason why that method works to resolve missing synced photos is because for whatever reason, something in the Apple Photos 5.0 (the version used in Catalina) corrupts the photo library, and the built-in database repair mechanism doesn’t actually fix it.

This is the problem—within your photos library, in the iPod Photo Cache, you’ll find another version of all of the photos that you’ve configured to sync to your device. For whatever reason, the files that don’t sync are versions that are zero bytes—devoid of content.

There was a time when deleting the entire iPod Photo Cache folder—which forces Apple Photos (and iPhoto, before it) to completely regenerate these files—would resolve the issue. But that’s not working in the Catalina version. A rebuild of the cache just creates the same zero-byte files.

Because there’s nothing wrong with the original photos, exporting them into a fresh, new library allows them to sync. Here’s the issue with that “solution,” though—exporting the original version of these photos, deleting them from the library, re-importing them back into the same library, and then performing a sync also works.

This is only a workaround, though, because I don’t know what causes this issue to happen in the first place. It can happen at any point, including to photos first imported with this version of Apple Photos which successfully synced at some point.

lionsecret wrote:

Anybody knows how "reset" app foto on ios13?

In order to make this consistently work the way it’s actually supposed to, you’ll need to create a new photos library, populate it with something (a single image will do), set that as the system photo library, and then sync that photo to your device. This will effectively delete everything that previously synced, but don’t be surprised if, at first glance, this doesn’t appear to have worked. Depending on the size of what was already there, it’ll take a while for everything too clear.

Then, you can just reverse the process—set your old library to the system library and sync. This will take care of the duplicates, at least for a while.

Note: make sure that you’re using the most recent GA version of iOS 13. The other day, a friend noticed that her phone still found ~20GB worth of photos, despite her having deleted them and then cleared deleted items. It turned out that she was still on iOS 13.3, so after updating to 13.4.1, at least that issue was resolved.