Very slow first iPhone and iPad photo sync over usb-a with Catalina

Hi Old Toad,

I, on the other hand, am using the Photos app. As described in two other threads (Under Catalina, my photos are not syncing from my Mac to my iPhone :( and Catalina keeps forgetting which Photos albums are to be synced to my iPhone), syncing from Mac to iPhone via USB is not working for me.

My Photos General Preferences pane says:

AFAIK, my Photos Library is my System Photo Library. I've just done the trick with launching Photos with the Option button depressed and confirmed that it is the only Photo Library I have.

Thanks

Same issues reported here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250716707?page=1

Apple was not aware of it, but it seems proven now that it is a bug, so no work around will help :-(

At least many users reporting this bug, so hopefully Apple will work fast on solving it and publishing first Catalina update.

I just noticed that there is another thread dealing with the same issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250716707

Just thought I’d make everyone aware.

I will also provide Apple Support with links to both threads in my daily problem reports

Just to make sure they can’t say they were not aware

Hi all

in this location: /Users/xxxxx/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/iPod Photo Cache/ I found this file: Photo Database

This is its content (replaced my username with xxxx):

The default interactive shell is now zsh.

To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.

For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.

/Users/xxxxx/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/iPod\ Photo\ Cache/Photo\ Database ; exit;

xxxxs-iMac:~ xxxx$ /Users/xxxx/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/iPod\ Photo\ Cache/Photo\ Database ; exit;

-bash: /Users/xxxx/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/iPod Photo Cache/Photo Database: cannot execute binary file

logout

Saving session...

...copying shared history...

...saving history...truncating history files...

...completed.

Deleting expired sessions...30 completed.

[Process completed]

Could someone check if you have the same?

Anyone know what it means? The link suggest to change the interactive shell, but I am hesitant to do so.

Hi George_S3, I am (as are some others) experiencing thumbnail corruption like that described in thread In the Photos app in Catalina, the thumbprints of some photos are broken at most magnifications. That seems different from the corruption you are experiencing, as my images appear to be "smeared" rather than black.

This problem has been going on for me for EIGHT MONTHS.... way before Catalina.

In fact, I even immediately remember the user "Squiddz" in this thread because he created another thread a while back. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250270137?

To sum up quickly, I am not using Photo app. I have thousands of photos and videos on my computer in separate folders that I personally organized. I am syncing them to a 2017 iPad Pro. They are all in there now, but if I need to sync just one single picture again, that process has to literally take up the WHOLE NIGHT. It just has to read and scan everything all over again to just add one file. Before, a simple task like that took maybe 20 seconds or less.

It is beyond frustrating.

I, like others, have sent MANY notifications and requests to Apple to fix this problem.

but EIGHT MONTHS and even several updates later, the problem is still here.

Please Apple. This tiring issue really NEEDS to be fixed.

Just to keep everyone updated, yesterday I updated my iPhone to iOS 13.1.3 via OTA as I was still having frequent Bluetooth disconnections in my car. With minor version updates it’s usually quite fast (like within 10mins max after it starts) but this took an unusually long time of approx 30mins!

Anyway, my point is that I got a shock when I went into my photos app approx 1hr after it restarted and found that all my synced albums have disappeared again!!! Most of the photos could still be found outside of the albums though. However, since I was out and about from morning till night yesterday, I had no choice but to leave it alone till I got home. Strangely, by mid afternoon, some of the photos in some of the albums started to appear. Unfortunately, it was still incomplete and a mess by the time I got home at night so I tried the following steps this time round:

• uncheck synching of photos (this led finder in Catalina to prompt for either keeping or removal of synced photos in my phone which I confirmed)
• recheck syncing of photos and try but this finished in a jiffy and so obviously didn’t work
• redo step 1
• remove the iPod cache folder
• recheck syncing of photos

Some strange things are definitely going on here. I’m just dreading the next time my albums disappearing again at the next iOS update.

Just to clarify, when I wrote:

• "uncheck syncing of photos", I meant uncheck sync to Photos app on Catalina with my selection of albums to sync
• "recheck syncing of photos", I meant recheck sync to Photos app on Catalina with my selection of albums to sync

One more thing, I forgot to mention that it took approx 1 hr to complete the sync of 13k worth of photos/videos.

As promised, my status update.

The past 2 days I spent several hours with an Apple Support engineer on the phone.

He confirmed, that there any man complaints about this and Catalina in general.

The sync issue is escalated to engineering.

What we have tested and the outcome:

Pictures which are in folders are not synchronised at all.

Pictures which are in an Album directly under My Albums are synchronised depending on their size

1. 6 pictures which were each between 2.4MB and 3.2MB were not synced
2. the same pictures each between 297KB and 440KB were not synced
3. the same pictures each between 13KB and 18KB were synced

When I tried the 1. group of pictures directly from the Folder on the Hard drive (i.e Select "Choose Folders" instead of "Photos" in Finder) it worked fine.

Logfiles and system data have been captured and sent to Apple.

Response time is about one week.

I will report back once I receive the feedback

Have a nice weekend!

The Photos app provides some in-built "containers", such as "My Albums" and "My Projects". I haven't used "My Projects" much so I won't say more about it. "My Albums" can contain any mix of albums and folders. A folder, too, can contain any mix of albums and folders. An album behaves as if it contains photos (I'll use the word photos to mean photos and/or movies), but it doesn't really contain them. What I mean by this is that a photo can appear in 0 albums or in 1 album or in multiple albums. For example, if I went on a walking holiday in Iceland with some friends, then I could make the photos from that holiday appear in albums called "Iceland" and "Walking" and "Friends & Family" and "Nature". An album can be a regular album or a smart album. To place some photos in a regular album, one drags them to that album. To place some photos in a smart album one creates a rule (or a set of rules) which cause those photos to appear in that smart album. Each album has a Key Photo, which "represents" that album visually. For event-based photos, I place up to four albums in a folder and then place that folder in a folder representing a year. For example:

Wanted to also get on this thread so I'll hear what happens. I too "upgraded" to Catalina today in hopes that it will fix my problem with syncing. I was hoping that we could sync audiobooks and photos independently, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I haven't tried syncing yet though because Catalina broke so many other things that I've been busy patching things up. I would expect the first sync to take a long time, but after that, it should be quick, like it was for years. Since iTunes photos sync has been broken for 6 months or more, I doubt they fixed it here. I'll give it a try tonight while I"m asleep not using my phone. Do you have a case number with apple already? If not, will you push it with them? My guy tried really hard but left and then I was told it was supposed to take hours. A better rep and or engineer might get you somewhere. Steve