Level 1

78 points

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

I updated to Catalina last night on my iMac. Today I've tried synching my iPhone Xr and my iPad Pro via USB/Finder (separately) to my iMac and the synch is very very slow. The iPhone never finished after a few hours and I'm trying my iPad now but I don't see any progress in the changes I had made to the photos (I deleted some before I synched, but the deleted ones still show on my iPad). I do have several thousand photos. Is the Photo Cache being rebuilt or something? Should I delete that and start again? Should I sync one photo folder at a time to start with? Is there anything else I should try? Previously I had posted issues with the latest iTunes in this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250270137

and solved that by using an older version of iTunes. I would hate to think that Catalina will be as problematic as iTunes for synching photos was before. Any help/advice would be appreciated, thank you.

iPhone XR

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 12:14 PM

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George_S3

Level 1

9 points

Posted on Oct 21, 2019 7:03 PM

I finally got (most of) my photos loaded... I split them into folders of 500 photos or less and processed them one at a time: I left a small (10 images) folder always on, and I'd add a new 2nd folder and let to process (by leaving most folders off, it processed in "only" 10 minutes). If they loaded okay, I backed up iPod Photo Cache to another folder. If most loaded okay and only a few were black, I moved them to a bad images folder that I don't sync. I then unchecked the new folder (leaving just the sample one) and synced again (this would just take a few seconds to send the delete command to the iPad). If the photos did NOT load okay (lots of black images), I deleted iPod Photo cache and copied the last good backup back into the main images folder. I then rebooted the Mac and iPad (rebooting the MBP is required to get images working for a while again, I don't know about the iPad).

Once I got to my iPhone X photos (.HEIC files instead of .JPG files), I never had any black images. I could have possibly processed them all at once, but I stayed to the previous method (folders of about 500 images each). Once all the photos were processed, I checked sync All folders, which took about 3 tries to get them all copied over.

(All that being said, I haven't dared sync another device with a different screen resolution and start all over again. But also, this time I remembered to back up iPad Photo Cache. (Hint: Time Machine does not back it up.).)

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176 replies

JPEWBDEN

Level 1

17 points

Oct 18, 2019 5:05 AM in response to Squiddz

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

6 pictures which were each between 2.4MB and 3.2MB were not synced
the same pictures each between 297KB and 440KB were not synced
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!

Squiddz Author

Level 1

78 points

Mar 25, 2020 1:38 PM in response to Squiddz

Speaking for myself - this is now working! First thing I did after updating both my iMac and my iPad, was delete all the photos off of an iPad. Then I deleted the iPod Photo Cache on my iMac and emptied the trash. Then synched the iPad and the Cache rebuilt itself and all of the photos synched. So far so good. Then I added just a couple of photos and deleted a couple. Hooked the same iPad back up and the changes were made quickly!!! YAY! Then did the same thing with my iPhone and other iPad (first deleted all photos off of each device). All the photos synched to both devices with no errors, and I purposely tried a couple of additions and those popped right on the device, as they should have. In other words, this appears to be working precisely as the old version of iTunes to which I had to revert back about a year ago. I am very happy so far!

Squiddz Author

Level 1

78 points

Apr 15, 2020 8:49 AM in response to W Stephen Wilson

W Stephen Wilson

If you turn off the photo sync, it takes all your photos off.

Interesting, that isn't my experience. When I turn off the photo sync, it asks if you want to keep the photos or delete them. I did that for months when the photo sync wasn't working (I was syncing videos, I forgot to mention that earlier).

Anyway, the photos stayed put!

Squiddz Author

Level 1

78 points

Apr 15, 2020 6:14 PM in response to George_S3

George_S3

Hi, that's possible but I don't think it's the case, at least for me, as I'm syncing different devices - smallest is an iPhone Xr, up to an iPad Pro 12.9". There's just one iPod Photo Library and the syncs go very quickly now. Each sync only adds/subtracts what I've changed since the last sync, and picks up any edits to any photos I've edited.

Oct 10, 2019 4:47 AM in response to JPEWBDEN

Funnily exactly the same experience here. When I tried that work around, only one or two folders were synced, and only a few pics.

Oct 16, 2019 12:48 AM in response to Squiddz

If you say who we can contact them as well. The more people contact them the more chance they will raise it I guess?

JPEWBDEN

Level 1

17 points

Oct 16, 2019 4:10 AM in response to yuppymike

Here you will find Apple Support phone numbers worldwide:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201232

Squiddz Author

Level 1

78 points

Oct 17, 2019 7:30 AM in response to EOSLightbox

EOSLightbox

Thanks for the info and the updates.

Squiddz Author

Level 1

78 points

Oct 17, 2019 5:41 PM in response to Squiddz

PERTINENT information. Doh.

Squiddz Author

Level 1

78 points

Oct 19, 2019 11:46 AM in response to JPEWBDEN

JPEWBDEN

Thank you for your detailed response. You have a good weekend too!

EIET

Level 1

4 points

Mar 10, 2020 1:27 PM in response to Squiddz

I just went through a third set of data being requested by the engineers. It blows my mind how it could take so long to fix something that worked since day one...

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