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

I'm having the same issue with more photos (duplicates) on my iPhone 11 (just upgraded) than on Photos on my iMac.

Photos on the iMac has about 49000 and 181 videos, while my iPhone has some 10000 more photos and 247 videos, and as far as I can tell all the extra photos are duplicates, 2 or 3 copies of the same photos and videos.

I've tries syncing several times and deleting them one by one off the iPhone with no luck.

My iMac is running Mojave as I can't update to the latest MacOS because of some programs I need that are not 64bit. My new iPhone 11 has the latest iOS.

i updated to 13.3 (hoping that it would improve my duplicate photos) and instead, it removed all of the albums from my phone. deselected sync photos, synced, re-selected, and in the process of syncing, but holding out little hope. i agree with the commenter who remarked that apple just wants us all to use icloud. it seems that is the plan. but with 37k photos on my macbook, i have no desire to have them everywhere -- or to pay to have them everywhere.

I got a message from Apple today (in reply to one of my feedback about this issue): "19C56a (macOS) and 17C5053a (iOS) build have been modified and the problem may have been resolved. Has the problem disappeared since the installation of the 19C56a (macOS) and 17C5053a (iOS) build?" - so my answear is NO! Unfortunately.

And konstantinos52's method (to hide geotags) is not working for me either.

I'm close to give up (we have this problem since june) and give a try to icloud photo sync, but to be honest, I don't believe it will work.

Same exact issue. I have spent more than 5-hours with Apple on this. They have no one who is capable of telling me the problem! Tired of talking to them! About to just quit trying. Just sits there saying "syncing..." I think it is definitely something with a corrupted database as some of the pictures that don't sync are in sequential order with the ones that do. No rhyme or reason as to why it skips some or duplicates or even triplicates some.

I tried deselecting Metadata location, too, but it didn't fix my problem. After deselecting it, then wiping all photos from my iPhone and doing a fresh sync, everything was fine. But a second sync a few days later, to transfer just a couple of new photos, totally kicked off the duplicates issue again.

sounds like you're using icloud photos to some extent. the only way i put photos on my mac is through import (whether via corded upload or air drop) -- and i'm experiencing the duplicate photo issues described in the thread. i'm not saying that photo stream isn't causing problems for you, but i don't think it's the source of this issue as a whole.

Technically, iCloud Photos and Photo Stream are two separate things but yes, they do work similarly. And it's also true that not *every* photo I've ever had go thru Photo Stream is being duplicated on sync. I've been hoping to find some clue why certain photos never seem to get duplicated... Selfies and Screenshots and the new Portrait-mode photos seem exempt, but I haven't taken that many of them to be absolutely sure.

That's correct about the duplicates issue being limited to those of us NOT using iCloud Photos, at least in my situation. I flat out refuse to use iCloud Photos because they do not support Smart Albums which I use often, so I'm a direct sync person. The problem started for me the day that I got my 11 Pro and had to switch to iOS 13. I think there was another comment on the thread that said a very similar issue happened in an earlier version of iOS (11 maybe?) that was eventually fixed.

I don't recall anything this severe in earlier iOS versions. But insofar as Mac OS versions are concerned, at least Mojave 10.14 and earlier still used iTunes to sync, and there was a bit of info relayed in iTunes' window during syncs to let users know what was happening. I do remember seeing iTunes report many more photos being copied than I expected (for instance, I had maybe a dozen new photos on my Mac to transfer to my iPhone, but iTunes would report copying 300 or more when I'd sync). But at least afterwards, the new photos would show up on my iPhone and there wouldn't be any duplicates among my old photos there. Under Catalina, though, since syncing happens directly from the Finder there's no information relayed whatsoever during the process, only the rotating "sync circle" which seems to start and stop at least 3 times with every sync before the procedure is finished. Very frustrating not knowing what's happening. Wish there were a log stored somewhere on the Mac that would show info on each sync as it occurs.

Hi MacLmR, I'm glad I came across this post. I too am having the exact same problem and think it's since iOS13. Synching from iTunes to iPhone XS, I was getting duplicate photos, off which 1 was deletable & 1 wasn't. A second issue I had was iTunes didn't recognise some formats such as .Tiff & .jpg as opposed to .JPG which would synch over. Also .MOV files would not synch even though they are all recognised in the Photos App. I was able to convert those .jpg files to "screenshot" .png files and successfully synch them, but that is very time consuming. When I deleted all photos to start again, that process may take up to 3 goes to remove all photos. So with my latest attempt to synch 21/1/20, again not all photos were transferred and 20 hrs later my iPhone is still trying to synch. I am in ongoing talks with my 5th Apple senior advisor at the moment. I'm not sure whether Apple know of the enormity of this issue.

Sorry, but I don't think that Photo Stream is part of the problem!

On all my three devices I have about 30.000 photos, the PhotoStream is nearly empty and when I sync (Mac PhotoApp Sync via Finder) I have a lot of duplicates in my albums.

But PhotoStream causes not the problem.

Reading the 10 pages of this thread, I have all these symptons, and one additional one.

I take pictures with my iPhone 11, and few other cameras, maybe 500-900 each month. I store them in folders, and I do not use Photos app in my iMac.

I sync typically last 12 months or current year to iPhone, so I have all pictures with me.

In past this was lightning fast process, I imported new pictures to Mac, and synced new photos in few minutes. I guess since iOS 13, the syncing started to take a minimum of 30 minutes, even if I repeated several syncs one after another with no changes.

And now the duplicate photos appeared as well. I spent full day removing all the pictures from sync, and then resynced. The problem appeared again, both slow sync and duplicate pictures. As stated earlier the duplicate picture has no location. In addition some duplicate photos appear as completely WHITE pictures. From time information I can see that it is duplicate of the previous/next picture.

I upgraded the new iPhone with larger memory to be able to sync and store more photos, but current broken sync is not helping achieve that objective, could have done with less memory in the phone. I hope Apple can fix this soon, I made also a bug report against iPhone topic.

This is the most frustrating problem that I’ve had with an Apple product in a while. Since updating my “economical” iPhone 11 Pro Max (which I chose primarily for the camera) to iOS 13.3.1, my photos duplicate from 2 to 8 times every time I open the app. These are photos taken on my phone and no other device is involved (I’ve yet to update my other devices). The photo counter in my app tells me that I now have over 700K photos!!! (And that is after some deletions) Does anyone think that a trip to the “Genius Bar” will help or is this just a glitch that Apple is going to have to remedy through the operating system?

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're not using any kind of sync from a computer (Windows or Mac) to get photos onto your new iPhone? You only have photos taken with your new iPhone that are duplicating on their own, within your iPhone, every time you launch its Photos app? If so, that definitely sounds like it deserves a trip to the Genius Bar, especially if you have Apple Care or are still within the 90-day limit for free support.

Same issue. I've been syncing my photos originally from the iPhotos, then Photos app on MacOS to iOS for many years. Never used iCloud, just use manual sync.

Since Dec 2019 it's been completely broken:

• Takes 1-2 hours to sync and phone gets warm, when it used to take 2-3 min (would just sync the last few new photos)
• Sometimes after those 1-2 hours nothing has synced
• Sometimes it's randomly duplicated thousands of photos

To then get rid of the dupes is a nightmare - very difficult. Can require hours of randomly unsyncing your entire library, syncing it, checking options etc. Leaves dupes behind which seem to be almost impossible to remove sometimes.

In its current state photos sync is entirely non-functional for me.