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

My Apple Advisor has taken over a week to communicate with me some simple requests. I synced Mac with iPhone and ran a concurrent diagnostic and uploaded that diagnostic to Apple directly.

My Advisor emailed me today asking that I update macOS to Catalina 10.15.5 which I just did and attempt a resynch.

Mac Photo count 9,667 video count 331. iPhone after sync photo count 11,767 videos 341. That 2,100 duplications. So now 21% of my photo stock on iPhone is duplicates. Lame. Oh and no hidden photos ever sync from Mac to iPhone either. Lamer.

I have one day to return my MacBook Pro, but I think I waited too long. Apple, you are losing me and the $10k I have in your stock. You're making me sad, sad, sad...

Interesting. But we know a few things:

• only time will tell if v13.5.1 actually addresses the bug. We’ve had many instances in the last year where an iOS13 update initially seemed to fix it only to not be the case. After multiple syncs over two weeks or so with no duplicates then maybe they have finally addressed it.

• the photos count between devices has always had issues- from iOS2 and the very beginning. Not sure why but it’s well documented. So, first things first, don’t worry about the counter too much. The main thing is that the count stays consistent and there are no duplicates.

Go to Settings / General / iPhone Storage / Music / Edit / and delete All Songs.

Then try to resync music with computer.

After multiple email and phone conversations I have sent my Apple Advisor detailed logs obtained through log profiles I downloaded to both iOS and macOS with data from multiple syncs that duplicate the photo duplication issue. I’m hoping the software engineers will find the error and be able to remedy it.

Will update here again when I have more information.

Thanks! I'll try that and hope that the photo duplication thing gets sorted soon. It's so random the ones it chooses to duplicate - and the sheer number of duplications of individual photos makes finding what one actually wants to see near impossible. Like other comments, most of the photos that have been duplicated were not even taken on my current phone, but were from years ago on various devices.

iCloud Photos does allow creation of albums, both in iOS and in Mac OS. See attached screenshots. Also, albums created in Photos on an iOS device automatically show up in Photos on the Mac, and vice versa, because iCloud syncing is built-in. It is, however, an all-inclusive process, so you can't select just certain albums on a Mac to sync to your iOS device(s).th

I give up Apple - I have no hope that this issue is going to be resolved. Trying to think of other ways to save my photos and get rid of apple forever. This is And has been nothing but added frustration and annoyance.

Got it about your issue.

Having recently gone through a laborious process to change my Apple ID to something other than the random 3 versions of .me, .mac, and .icloud, I finally managed to store all my photos, on an external hard drive. (Dropbox will also back up your photos every time you go there, if you want.)

I then deleted my phone from the old acct. (have yet to migrate 4 other devices. It’s a process.)

Have been Apple/Mac user since 89. 30 years! So had an id that was too long, difficult to enter, and had been exposed on ivebeenpwnedso my email was from hacker to hacker, under blinded addresses pretending to be me.

I reported fishing, naively for about 4-5 years.

I had no outside emails as I don’t trust Google or Amazon to have my interests at heart. And I live in a disaster (hurricane) zone, Hawai’i. I like redundancy.

Then I reopened the iPhone, created a new ID, and was able to retrieve all “my photos” from storage. Even though I had stored them on phone (I am a writer and journalist.)

This pain in the *** process eliminated my frustration, anger, upset with Apple, as they have exceeded their ability to be the once user friendly platform they were.

Life is too short to just ***** about what doesn’t work. Easier to hack around their sandbox of User Unfriendly algorithms..

Cheers and Aloha

Voila....everything I wanted without the crap.

ok, so they don't care. They want all to go to the cloud. . End of story. They don't even look at these discussions or endorse them. They'll direct you here, but once you say that you've done something suggested here, they'll distance themselves pretty quick.

All they are interested in is revenue generating platforms and there aren't enough people not using non-cloud to make a difference. Heck, I just talked to someone the other day who upgraded to Catalina and none of their cloud photos came over to the new setup - they couldn't find them anywhere. I guess they got lost in the cloud. Its all buggy. It just feels good to post it though.

I just need a solution that allows me to sync my Smart Albums. If there was full support for that in iCloud, I’d be willing to switch. Until then, I guess I’ll just continue the game of getting syncing to remove the 12k photos on my phone and then re-adding them every few weeks. My photos get automatically backed up on another service, but they aren’t managed/organized as I need them to be.

Are you disabled?

Have you read the whole thread?

this is not a backup issue! We all know how to restore our iPhone!

we are talking about duplicates in Photo app! And No, iCloud will never be the right solution!

I just clean my a** with 200gb! I have lots of pictures, I need more storage and I will never throw 120$ every year just to make Photo work like it should because Apple is too lazy to fix it!

*And take a breath*

I think they were trying to be helpful with the icloud advice, and I take it in that spirit. But like you I'd rather just have a working sync between the company's two apps with the same name on its two (supposedly ever-more closely integrated) operating systems. It really shouldn't be that hard - it can't be a major bug. (To be honest, I was quite happy with Aperture, and sort of regret ever transitioning to Photos when they stopped supporting it...)

It is clear that you have fun wasting your money!

If Apple tells you that now you have to pay for something that yesterday was for free you say “thank you”! Nice....

I’m sorry but I’m not apple’s fool... I have a dignity!

When I am crunching out journalism, professional papers, columns, and photos on a deadline, I need functionality.

I have no identity or worry about ego attributes. I am work getting done, building communities.

I don’t ask my refrigerator to send me messages about what’s in it. Expecting cold food is enough.

Functionality is what makes the world work.

Cheers

Same here! Countless file uploads to Apple Engineers, discussions with support and countless hours of time! I agree that this is probably not a complicated fix. I’m not wasting any more of my time to chase ghosts! Apple should be ashamed of themselves! I don’t want the cloud!!!!! If it’s not going to be fixed, let me know so I can move on!

True, and no offense is intended. Many of us are frustrated and don’t want to make excuses for Apple on the issue, nor see all the good that Apple as accomplished as an excuse for this blatant disregard to a multiplicity of complaints.

You expect cold food from the refrigerator, but what if your hi-tech refrigerator suddenly started multiplying everything in it....condiments, expired food, milk cheese etc etc and the kicker was that you couldn’t remove the extra because the fridge would keep multiplying that same food over and over again?

Soon enough you’d have no more room for new food, and worse even is you have to look at all that old food, and multiples of it to boot.

Photo sync is a basic functionality since Photos came out over a decade ago. Somehow they screwed up the code and fortunate for them, it pushes people to use the iCloud rather than deal with an unwieldy, duplicitous photo sync. It’s annoying and takes up space on our phone, and diminished the Apple experience we all have come to love and appreciate. Many of us see this as a willful F*%#k up because they refuse to fix it despite innumerous complaints from all of us.

Anwho, cheers to you and goodwill and health to you all in this, our American Covidpocalypse.