Level 1

85 points

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

Since iOS 13, whenever I do an iTunes sync of my iPad (pro) and iPhone, the Photos library on both get filled with duplicates of most, but strangely enough not all of the photos. To get rid of the duplicates, I have to sync the devices with Sync Photos unselected (which sometimes works) or sync to another Mac with an empty Photos Library and then resync in my own account.

Sometimes it takes multiple syncs tries to get rid of superfluous photos on the iOS devices. (Which I also find odd because I have no photos in iCloud and iCloud Photos is switched off on all devices, so a sync to another account should remove all synced photos in one try).

Does anyone else have this issue?

iPad Pro 10.5-inch, Wi-Fi

Posted on Sep 24, 2019 12:36 AM

Top-ranking reply

Joyryde

Level 1

26 points

Posted on Nov 4, 2019 8:05 PM

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.

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356 replies

Sep 16, 2020 7:57 PM in response to fernando117

Guys, if in fact iOS14 finally solves this issue it would be a huge deal. A huge deal.

Sep 16, 2020 8:33 PM in response to fernando117

Hallelujah! I'm wrapt it's not just me!

DrKens85

Level 1

14 points

Sep 30, 2020 1:54 AM in response to MacLmR

someone explains to me why this difference in number of photos? Thanks!

Sep 30, 2020 8:51 PM in response to DrKens85

IOS 13 has solved this issue but introduced new one where I dont see my synced videos on iPhone. Details are at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251829937

fbh82

Level 1

4 points

Dec 2, 2020 5:15 AM in response to MacLmR

https://fbhtool.com/

qazokm1

Level 1

20 points

Nov 9, 2019 12:14 PM in response to Joyryde

The cover pictures never works... but the real problem is that this way you can’t sync the pictures taken with your iPhone that you process on the photo app. Or you have to put the pictures in the app, process them, export them, put them into the right folder and finally sync... it is less comfortable!

in the end photo and the synching process MUST work! This is not an option! The must solve this problem! It used to work on Mojave, in must work on Catalina!

Nov 21, 2019 7:10 PM in response to VanViaTO

I can confirm this sync duplication also occurs on macOS Mojave 10.14 (I’ve actively avoided upgrading to macOS Catalina 10.15).

So iOS 13 Photos app seems to be the common perpetrator, regardless of syncing photos library with iTunes (in 10.14) or Finder (in 10.15)

Dec 11, 2019 12:40 PM in response to hoyhoy

hoyhoy wrote:

Still broken in 10.15.2 and iOS 13.3.0. Sync'd this morning and got duplicate and missing photos. UNBELIEVABLE!

Yes, truly unbelievable and depressing. Still broken with 10.14.6, iTunes 12.9.5.5 and iOS 13.3.0 as well.

Dec 17, 2019 10:05 AM in response to MacLmR

Hello to everybody,

I had the same problem with iOS 13.3 and OS 10.15.2 and I solved by my self.

The problem is one or more photo that are corrupted.

I have more than 16.600 photo on my Mac that are sync with iPhone ant it was a long job to find the photo that give the problem. I proceeded as follow:

1) I synced my Mac with my iPhone. The app Foto on iPhone at the end was stuck with message "syncing".

2) I checked for each album that the number of photo inside app Foto on IOS was the same number inside app on Foto OS

3) when I found a mismatch I checked which photo was not saved on iPhone.

4) When I found the photo missing, I exported this photo with all metadata.

5) I canceled the photo from app Foto OS and I imported the same photo previously saved.

6) I did the same procedure for all missing photo.

7) At the end of this procedure (very long and boring) I solved my problem!!!

I hope to be useful.

Alex

Dec 23, 2019 4:05 PM in response to erniefrompaulina

Please be sure to also submit a bug report via the link posted earlier.

This issue is almost certainly related to iOS13. Prior to 13, the sync functioned normally. 13 broke it- and many other things. Sloppy all around. It's shameful but at this point all we can do is wait until v13.3.1

In the meanwhile I suggest you do not attempt to sync all your photos. Just do the last month or two. Then it seems to behave.

Dec 26, 2019 10:14 AM in response to buddyjack2

That’s a really clever workaround, buddyjack2. Thanks for sharing! I had previously been removing the photos to start a fresh sync by unchecking all the albums, but it wouldn’t erase them all at once and I had to sync after unchecking each album. It sounds like this solution might help wipe the photos off in one sync.

Jan 13, 2020 6:15 AM in response to MacLmR

on Photos app in my mac, I unselected Preferences -> General -> Metadata -> Include location info in published. Removed all photos from iPhone and synced again. I have synced my iPhone several times but haven't seen duplicates yet.

Jan 17, 2020 4:26 AM in response to jane_p

The reason I suggest Photo Stream as the culprit is that it's the way nearly all of my photos got onto my Mac in the first place: namely, if I take pictures with my iPhone, they are waiting for me in "My Photo Stream" section of the Photos application on my Mac almost immediately, and then I typically move them into albums in that application on the Mac. I might later delete them from Photo Stream in order to keep it empty, but it doesn't change the fact that those photos on my Mac originally got there via Photo Stream. The only other way I've gotten photos onto my Mac is by Import or drag-n-drop (out of an email message, for instance). Interestingly, *those* photos have never ended up being duplicated after a sync. Nor, for that matter, has any video clip I've moved into an album in the Mac Photos application... possibly because videos do not (and cannot) use Photo Stream to get into my Mac. I've also never seen duplication of any "Live" photos I've taken on my iPhone and later imported to my Mac... again, because "Live" photos do not (cannot) go thru Photo Stream.

Jan 18, 2020 12:42 AM in response to MacLmR

I think someone here said that iTunes or Photo first delete the photos before they re-sync. I also noticed this pattern during syncing with iTunes. What happens is when I start the sync, I will see my photos and videos count go down, yes, go down, even though I did not uncheck any albums. So, at the start of the sync, I will have something like 16,448 photos and 421 videos. When I click sync, the count will go down: 16,448 - 16330 - 16100 - ..... - 11000 - ..... - 7013 - 6821 - 6723 - 6625; and similarly the videos count will also reduce: 430 - 410 - 380 - .... - 230. Both counts will drop but not to zero. There is no fixed number but it will start adding when the photo counts hit about 5500 photos and the video about 200. The sync will then start to add photos and videos but again, when it reaches around 16000+ photos and maybe 400+ videos, the sync will freeze. And it could take a few more rounds of syncing sometimes over a couple of days before the full sync is completed. I'm running MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 (don't want to upgrade to Catalina), and I'm using iPhone 11 Pro Max 512GB iOS 13.3.

Never seen such a behaviour previously.

Jan 28, 2020 12:37 PM in response to mossback_

In my Photos (Version 4.0 3461.7.150) I have none of that enabled (Photo Stream, Sharing), not even iCloud is used (I have nearly 50k photos and videos over the years!) so I do not think that is the cause of problem.

My iPhone 11 Pro is running iOS 13.3

yes, it is frustrating to see a company that is so supposedly great and innovative as Apple Computer have such amateurish annoying software.

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