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

So I’m having this problem too. I’m now on the latest Catalina os, sync with a cable using finder and select which folders to sync. I do not use the cloud. I believe I have been having this issue now since before Catalina as I had been in contact with Apple previously during the last about year and 1/2 when during sync iTunes would from time to time randomly sync hundreds of pictures even though I had not made changes to any and there would be no reason to sync them. For instance I do manual back ups to the computer and if I did a manual back up, iTunes and now finder somehow finds photos to sync.....

I think Apple doesn’t care and it’s a way to get more people to the cloud....... I’m now looking for a third party app to use to sync.

Maybe this is a bigger problem or at least more than just be caused by syncing..... I’m now noticing duplicates of various photos I keep in documents folders. I don’t sync these folders or keep them on the cloud but I have multiple folders under documents parent folder and some of those folders have a few pictures. Some of them have been duplicated where the file extensions have switched to upper case .JPG. The other differences I see is that the duplicates have different dates and a creator listed 12.2......

Bingo. You hit the nail right on the head. No matter how much you pay for that iphone with the greatest amount of storage, it does not produce a recurring revenue stream for apple. Cloud storage = recurring, predictable cash flows, and this is the name of the game. There is no top line or bottom line impact to apple's business if they allocate resources to address this problem. None. Zero.

After my third sync with 13.4 i've got 19k photos, 3k more than it should be.

So again, i unchecked "sync photos" and said "delete", but the photos have not been deleted.

So i red about "just ditch on cloud phots" for a short moment. After switshing it of again, the 19k pics startet being deleted (seen vanishing while being in the app). I had to do it twice because it stoped at 1.8k left.

The hole time, i saw a "syncing" Text below the last line of all photos.

I also cleaned the trash can. No it sais "52 objects are upload" (which can be halted) ... what ever those 52 are (the route sees no upstream) ... i will wait, then uncheck cloud photos and sync again.

I found a solution to this.

I use iTunes and Iphoto and EVENTS (63). Updating to IOS 13.4 removed all photos. Synching seemed to produce many random duplicates and out of order EVENTS.

I gave up and started again next day. Noticed at the bottom of each EVENT page a word. Synching… This even though iTunes showed no activity and I presumed it has finished and had been disconnected.

1. Removed all photos from iPad. 

2. Synched 1 ticked EVENT. Synch OK.

2. Synched 2 ticked EVENTS. Surprised EVENT 1 was deleted and the 2 EVENTS downloaded. Synch OK.

3. Tried this up to EVENT 10. Same response. Delete all photos and download 1-10 fresh in one go.

4. Deleted all photos.

5. Ticked al EVENTS 1 by 1 in iTunes and synched. After a while iTunes seemed to show no activity. BUT

6. At the bottom of iTunes window a multi coloured bar iPad bar seemed to be expanding. Placing curser on pink block showed Photos being still download.

7. I left the synching do its thing for a couple of hours and all the EVENTS got populated correctly with no duplicates and arranged properly. Places were OK too.

8. It would seem iTunes top middle activity bar is not showing the behind the scene synching still carrying on.

So being patient and allowing time seems to help

I don't agree, because the problems started exactly with iOS 13. My three devices worked fine with iOS 12.x and macOS Mojave. When updating to iOS 13 in September (still macOS Mojave) the duplicate problem began.

To add injury to insult, my music is also duplicating itself! All I’ve done is a basic sync to my computer, the same way I’ve done it for the last decade. Random photos and random songs duplicating every time I sync.

Apple please fix this issue. I used to hate the Windows bloatware, but this is the mother of all bloatware, and it’s an issue that has not been fixed since last year. I’m an Apple loyalist but honestly on my last thread with Apple due to software bugs like this all too frequent.

The advisor told you that this was the new normal? Outrageous. I just bought a brand new MacBook Pro (upgrade froma 2009 MBP with 8gb ram and 500gb sshd) thinking a new computer might fix the issue. My old computer had tons of dupes. The problems persist. There have been hundred upon hundreds of people on Apple Support Communities who affirm they have this problem too.

New normal? Could Apple really be designing their sync software to be so buggy it drives users to iCloud services instead? It’s hard to fathom a company so benevolent would be intentionally ruining user experience in exchange for compliance with their iCloud services.

Still, we’ve seen stubbornness from Apple before with removal of wanted ports and disk drives before their times. My brand new MBP 2019 16” spends a significant portion of the day with a big dongle so I can plug Ethernet and my iPhone 8. Who needs an uninterrupted internet connection anymore? I do. Even playing games online are choppy without it.

Whatever. Can get past those issues if Apple would get their software to “just work” like their motto.

Before buying this new computer I debated a Microsoft Surface or Dell XPS but decided to give Apple another shot and boy is that going down the tubes if they don’t fix this software bug. Investing $2700 into beautiful Apple hardware if the software blows just ain’t worth it anymore.

Maybe this issue is unique to me but I’ve also had songs in my iTunes Library be duplicated, as well as Voice Memos with syncing. Syncing used to be easy and straightforward. What happened!?

I am 90% confident the issue is in iOS13, as problems started really popping up back in September of 2019 after it was released. Although duplication complaints identical to the current issues have been documented on Apple Support Communities as far back as 2013.

I will keep the thread updated when I get a response from my Advisor next week. I’m not going to stop pestering until they fix the issue.

Conveniently, I spent over an hour creating an email response to my advisor with specific details only to accidentally delete it while having a single attached photo selected for deletion and go figure there is no way to recover a deleted email draft on Mail. Oh boy this is going to be fun.

Yes, using iCloud is one option, however it is not the option that I, or many other wish to use.

In regards to redundant photo storage, I can utilize Amazon or Google cloud services for free to backup photos. I also have a Time Capsule which I backup to automatically so I have three copies of all my photos and music, phone, Mac and Time Capsule.

I've used iCloud for photos and had problems recalling photos when service is slow or non existent.

It is surprisingly convoluted to consolidate your photos accurately after using iCloud, so good luck if you ever want to terminate that subscription service.

Thanks for your input though. Syncing to Mac used to be the standard, and simple at that. Now it’s complicated by serious bugs that we all are counting on Apple to fix.

Thanks for responding, and I didn't say I didn't agree with the complaint. Amazon and Gcloud are great, as long as they are extant. I am a survivalist.

I wish for everyone's complaints to be satisfied....at least as far as IOS and synchs.

Aloha.

Always good to hear I’m not alone in my Apple frustration! I, too, was a Apple evangelist if you will, and their products and software really pushed the edge and made tech approachable and easy.

Now it’s become the opposite, with convoluted workarounds, Terminal commands you’ve never seen or heard before, and complicating processes that once were so clean and simple.

The iPhone-Mac synch is literally a foundational process Apple built its company around; the idea that when you own multiple Apple products they all ‘just work’ together.

The IOS13 synch with Mac has so many problems I really do worry if it will be able to address them all.

Movies not syncing, photos duplicating, hidden photos never syncing, for me I have music duplications, voice memo duplications.....it makes no sense.

Im right there with you Osiris on iCloud. If Apple can’t get their software to work like it did five, even ten years ago why put all my media in an even more complicated storage solution. In my experience it’s also not a simple process to pull photos from iCloud if you want to keep an original backup on a device that did not take the actual photo, like the Mac, because you can’t tell which are locally saved and which are cloud based.

I will not relent in requesting Apple fix this software bug. Hoping to get some info from Advisor next week.

I suggest we all contact Apple Advisors and email them descriptions of our problems. Strength in numbers...

iOS 13.5 still suffers from the same issue. What’s also annoying now is that the problem became that every time I connect my phone with my Mac, all photos are deleted and then resynced, which makes it unusable with a library of 10,000+ photos/videos.

I have the same problem - but weirdly only with a few of the photos. But boy oh boy, the ones it chooses to duplicate, it duplicates 100s of times!!! I also noticed that last time I tried to play some music from my phone (iPhone 8), most of my library was not there. I connected to my MacBook, did a sync, which didn't do anything, so thought perhaps I needed to autofill instead. All the music is now on my phone .... but if you look at an album list, it looks like most albums have been duplicated or triplicated. Turns out One will have some of the songs on, then the other 2, or 3 will only have one song each. No idea what to do with it now - can't figure out how to delete all the songs off my phone and start again - don't actually trust it to work properly. Someone at Apple must get their finger out and sort this mess!!!

sigh. how nice that this issue isn't important to you. i agree: we could all just pay apple to store our photos in the cloud in perpetuity ...

i check in from time to time to see if the issue has been fixed. i do think it's worth noting that this is a function apple still purports to offer. by which i mean, we're not griping about how we wish the good old days were here. they say it will work. it doesn't.

i would prefer them to say "we will no longer support photo syncing other than through icloud". they don't, though. and i know, wishing and waiting for it to be fixed is a version of insanity. but i expected more from the company who claimed things would be easy and "just work" and is sitting on a giant pool of cash, at least some of it thanks to my family's purchases.

agreed. i have 40k photos: that's why i don't want to use icloud ... at the present it's 40k photos everywhere (insanity!) or nothing.

i simply meant it would be more honest to state "we only support icloud for syncing photos between your apple devices". right now they state that the method i prefer -- direct sync, selecting albums/photos of my choosing -- is an option.

and yet it doesn't work. and from all the posts i've seen over the past year, there is no fix for the issue that started with ios13 and from the reports for ios14 beta, no fix is forthcoming.