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

I also have this, when syncing a new iPad to a MacBook Pro on Catalina.

I turned cloud and sharing/photo stream settings off completely to rule them out.

I was getting approximately 11000 photos synced to the iPad from 5800 photos on the MacBook’s Photos library. Duplicates and triplicates of everything.

I posted about it on here after spending about 6 hours trying everything.

I was told straight up it is a known bug, and to report it.

However. I did manage to click the “Days” and “Months” tabs in Photos on the MacBook so it curated my library (took hours and hours..) and then when resyncing it was much less of a variation in expected vs actual photos - around 20-30 photos difference, rather than thousands.

Still, a basic function that doesn’t function..

Unfortunately the new 13.5.1 does NOT correct the duplication problem. I still get the duplications and often times triplication! This has been a problem with the13.xx series software. It's so frustration and upsetting that Apple does not find a fix for this. Whenever I get duplication/triplications I try to remove all the pictures from my iPad by re-selecting/syncing selected albums which often times does not work. What seems to work every time is removing all the pictures via the settings my iPad, then access iCloud, then turn on Photos on the iCloud (which I never use with photos, so its always off) then it tells me its about to remove all pictures previously synced via Finder if I want to use the iCloud for pictures, and I click okay. After all the pictures and videos are deleted, I turn off iCloud for pictures, go back to Finder and sync all the pictures I desire via the normal selected albums choice. Needless to say it's a pain in the you know where. If that's not frustrating enough, the next time I perform an update via my Mac to iPad I again find duplicates and triplicates. I sure wish Mr Steve Jobs and his colleagues were back again because the current Apple staff seem to put out quite a few software problems. I've used Apple for many, many years and don't remember having so many problems in the past!!!!!! COME ON APPLE, GET YOUR CRAP TOGETHER ONCE AND FOR ALL, especially with pictures. And no I don't like the iCloud picture syncing because, 1. I have to buy more storage space for my 32 gig of pictures, 2. It doesn't allow me to create albums. I like my pictures in created albums for each selected year and iCloud does not allow me. JUST FIX THE PICTURES SYNCING THROUGH FINDER THE WAY ITS SUPPOSED TO WORK. THANK YOU!!

For me with a total reset of my iPhone (delete all data and reinstall all the system and apps)

it worked fine.

Maybe, but I'm having the problem with High Sierra and iOS 13.1 / 13.2. I have another device (iPad Air) with iOS 12.4.2 and it sync works perfectly with the same computer and photos library, so I think iOS version is the responsible of this issue.

Mrgnv, that only works temporarily. When you connect your phone again (2nd or 3rd time) it will transfer duplicates yet again... Totally absurd.

Everyone who reads this thread, please submit a bug report directly to Apple. The link is easily found via search. The issue stems from iOS 13. It is not related to your computer OS or iTunes.

the best thing we all can do is to report this issue at https://www.apple.com/feedback/. provide as much details as possible and provide a link to this thread. more reports will help get attention for issue to be fixed.

Syncing photos has worked perfectly for years. iOS 13 broke that. The issue is with iOS 13- not iTunes or Catalina. To anyone and everyone with this problem please be sure to submit a bug report/feedback with the links provided in this thread.

Well, that's depressing news; we may have to wait for iOS 14 at the earliest to fix this. BTW I realize, as has been pointed out numerous times, that Apple isn't obligated to read these discussion forums but, nevertheless, I wish the title of this one could be edited a bit to reflect the couple of things we have discovered among ourselves; namely, 1) syncing "through iTunes" isn't the problem, since Catalina doesn't even use iTunes any more, and 2) Photo Stream does seem required in order to trigger the duplicates problem. Maybe the title would more correctly be, "Photo Stream causes duplicate photos when syncing to iOS 13 devices" ?

I tried deleting the iPodPhoto Cache as well and it had no effect.. interesting.. I didn’t bother digging too deeply.. So far I’ve had zero issues since recreating a new library from scratch and merging...

I expect that unless Apple fixes the root cause of the issue with the Photos library database, any workaround for the issue of zero-byte .ithmb files in the iPod Photo Cache (including building a new library with third-party software) is only temporary. The real resolution has to come from Apple.

To expand upon MacLmR’s solution, I repeated this with the same set of conditions, save for one—I used iOS 13.3.1, the current GA release.

I removed all of the photos and the backup directory (and the iPod Photo Cache, to test a theory), and re-synced. The duplicates are gone (at least for now, through a few additional syncs, but I’ve seen that happen before), but the outright missing photos (zero-byte .ithmb files) are still an issue, which I can temporarily work around with my previous not-quite-a-solution solution.

Absent more action from Apple, I expect the duplicates to return over time, and I expect photos to disappear again, but… a workaround is still a workaround, however briefly it continues to work.

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

There’s a limit to this, though, and there’s an easy way to find out whether or not the Mac is still actively syncing anything to the iOS device. Look to the disk section of the activity monitor on your Mac.

If no data is being actively read from the disk for long durations, then it’s certainly not actively syncing photos to your device.

In truth, I could leave my iPhones or iPad connected to the Mac for days at a time, and it still wouldn’t clear the “syncing” message at the bottom of iOS photo albums. I know this because I’ve tried.

Not sure if this thread has morphed to other issues but last week I synced my phone via usb/finder after removing all photos in the manner I've been forced to sync since the Catalina upgrade. This sync was successful in that it imported all photos and movies with no duplication. Today I attempted to sync new photos twice without removing the photos. The first time it actually removed about 30 photos and also some videos. The second time it removed about three thousand photos and some videos. It failed to sync by not adding the new photos. My workaround is to remove all photos and then sync again.

I can confirm that issue is in iOS 13. I sync my Photos from macOS Mojave to iPad (iOS 12) which works well. Syncing same library to iPhone(iOS 13.4.1) causes duplicate/missing photos on device. Also, I don't see any 0 size ithmb file in iPod Cache directory.