Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

You don't need to delete your Albums. I have now discovered a different way of doing this so we can get our photos back on our phones as Albums just how they used to be. The photos need to be moved out of Folders and made into Albums on their own. Go into the Folder holding the Album of photos, click on the Album name and drag the photos up and drop them in My Albums. It means that the original photos are just moved to a new position but keep the original name. Sync and you should find that the photos are on your phone just as they used to be. I've done this today and all my photos are showing on my phone just as they used to before Catalina came along. Until Apple get the syncing problem sorted out this appears to be the only way of getting our photo albums on our devices the way we want to. Hope that all makes sense!

Hi

Local sync has also stopped since I upgraded to Catalina. Same problem with both iPhone and iPad. In my case all photos are in albums that are in top level (My albums).

Did call Apple support today. We discovered its related to that photos are not in the Library. I have this option unchecked (add to library when import). Also my photos are on a NAS connected with SMB (AFP tested too).

After collecting photos to Library the sync works again!

Note: A related problem is Places. It does only work with photos in library. Very strange too is that places works via Persons.

To many workarounds for my taste. I hope Apple shape up since this was all working fine in Mojave.

Correct, I am aware of iTunes is now called Music on Catalina (10.15.2). I’m just not used to calling it Music yet. Ok, I’m going to follow your instructions right now, and see if this works....

Wow, I actually got it to work... Sweet! Thanks @Bru55

It’s very simple actually... Just drag the albums you want synced from ‘Photos’ to your iPad or iPhone, out of their folder in ‘Photos’ and put them directly under ‘My Albums’. Screen shot attached shows my 3 albums I dragged from the folder ‘Personal Photo Events’ and put them under “My Albums’: Peppy’s Album; Favorites Album; Instagram Posts & Affirmations

Then just sync and they pop up. FINALLY!!!! Good job @Bru55 👍🏼

On March 24, Apple published a new procedure entitled ‘Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder’ (see link below). Last week, the Apple support person I have been dealing with contacted me and asked if I would ‘test drive’ this procedure to see if it solves any of the multiple issues I’ve been having with Catalina and the syncing of Photos with my iPads, and syncing my iPods to playlists in Music.

To get to the point: it solved just about everything!

Background: Upgraded to Catalina in December. Had many of the same challenges others are experiencing: only syncs all photos/albums to my iPad Pro (at first, I couldn’t even get Catalina to recognize the iPad); can’t sync a mix of albums; takes forever to sync; very flakey and unreliable syncing of my iPods, etc.

Configuration: late-2015 27” iMac running 10.15.4 syncing via USB cable (no iCloud involved) to a 2017 10.5” iPad Pro running 13.4; 4th generation iPad running iOS 10; iPod Classic and Nano; and iPhone 5s and 6s with latest OS that each will run.

All images are stored in the Photos library. Not dealing with referenced images. This is a critical point, as I earlier moved my almost 15k referenced images into Photos to address an ongoing issue of the links to the referenced images getting severed in Photos. In hindsight, this was also likely a permissions issue.

I have not tried to sync pictures to an iPhone, so I can’t confirm if that problem is fixed. Images download to Photos on my iMac from my iPhones without any problems.

Prior to going through the new permissions procedure, we ran the following on my iMac: Booting into Safe Mode, resetting the NVRAM, and resetting the SMC. Also did a minor clean-up of my album hierarchy in Photos.

Did these preliminary steps help with the fix? Don’t really know, but they did give me about as clean a machine as possible before repairing the permissions.

With this procedure you use Terminal to access the Repair Home app. After repairs are complete you install a new copy of your current OS. This is a direct replacement and does NOT require any, at least for me, resetting of preferences, moving files, etc. Very simple.

With the procedure I went as far as Step 7. Did not need any of the ‘If the issue persists’ steps.

IMPORTANT: Because you are trying to fix issues that involve Photos there are two critical, not documented, steps after Step 7:

Step 8 - Immediately after login to the updated OS, hold down the Command and Option keys and launch Photos. Repair/restore the Photos library. This can take some time and for me it stalled at 99% for 3-4 minutes. It did finish.

Step 9 - Immediately after the Photos library repair is complete, restart your computer.

Now you can test and see if this has solved some or all of the issues you are having.

After this fix I can sync any combination of albums to my iPad Pro. Even my six-year-old iPad running iOS 10 actually syncs, very slowly, however. iPods sync quickly and correctly, although some times the sync doesn’t take on the first attempt and ejecting and reconnecting the iPod is required.

Why did this work, at least for me? In conversation with the Apple support person, he highlighted the critical role permissions play in the working of the Mac OS. Over time permissions get corrupted and/or just do not function as required. At the start of the support article there is a long list of problems caused by permission issues.

I am guessing here, but possibly the major changes Catalina introduced accentuated any underlying permission issues with the Home folder. The new process of syncing Photos and Music with various devices via the Finder was part of the ‘collateral damage’ of such a radical OS change.

My suggestion is that if you are currently working with an Apple support person you first discuss this procedure to confirm it makes sense for your particular situation. And as always, don’t try this unless you have a current backup of your system.

I hope this process addresses some of the multitude of issue out there relating to Catalina and syncing.

Here is the link to the support article. Good luck!

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203538

USB sync to both my iPad and iPhone now work. It's taken me awhile to figure it out but here is what is critically important:

1. You must have the SUPPLEMENTAL update to Mac OS 10.15.4 installed on your Mac.
2. Your iOS and/or PadOs version must be updated to 13.4.1
3. You must perform a repair/rebuild of your Mac Photos library.
4. If you have any corrupt photo files in your library, you have to delete those and replace them with photos from your backup.
5. You must have sufficient storage space on your iDevice.

When you perform a USB sync, it is important to know that when the finder has finished the sync process your iDevice has not. It continues to unpack, organize, and store your pics into folders. In my case 14,300 photos took about 45 minutes to complete the unpacking process on my iPhone Xr.

At the end of the day, USB sync is working on my iPad pro and iPhone Xr. It only took Apple 7 months to get here but now it works.

Just as an update.

I wrote directly to Tim Cook yesterday, explaining the disappointment in the new operating system and the problem of syncing photos with their own devices. Much to my surprise, I received a phone call & email from the Corporate Executive Relations of Apple. Although we played a bit of telephone tag we connected this afternoon. He advised that he is not tech support but he was going to set me up with a senior support representative, at my convenience, which was going to be tomorrow morning. He also said that he listened to my last conversation with Apple Support when I was told the tech rep would call me back and didn't. He advised that never should have happened and is going to look into that further.

About 30 minutes ago, I received a follow up call from him advising that he did speak to a senior support tech and that she advised that they are very much aware of this problem and are working on correcting it. She looked over what I had written and advised that I am already doing everything that can be done and that the "work around" that she was going to recommend, is exactly what some of us are already doing; moving the albums out of their folders so that the album is sitting directly under My Albums.

Lets hope that the next update includes the correction we are waiting for.

I removed 6 Smart Albums from inside a folder in Photos on my Mac Mini. Previously they did not sync to neither my iPad Pro nor my iPhone XR. After moving the albums to the root location, both sync routines worked as expected when these albums were selected in Mac Sync Settings.

All my devices are using the most current version of their OS.

Neal

I am suffering from this issue as well - none of my Albums are syncing to iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.

Here are some updates/tips:

1. I've filed a bug report using Feedback Assistant right after Catalina launched which is still open and resolved.
2. I've also been in contact with a Senior Adviser since early December. We did some troubleshooting to confirm the issue initially. I reached out to him after Catalina 10.15.3 and iOS 13.3.1 were released and still didn't fix the issue. He assured me that it's a known issue that is still being worked on. While that might be true, it certainly seems that this is not a high priority issue for Apple to fix. Makes you wonder if any of the programmers working on these areas actually use their own software...
3. I tried moving all my Albums in Photos under the main 'My Albums' and while that actually syncs the albums, it only syncs smaller photos (seemingly up to 1280 pixels wide), so that's not a viable workaround for me.
4. Syncing using a Smart Album doesn't work either, it only syncs smaller photos (seeemingly up to 1280 pixels wide), so that's not a viable workaround for me.
5. Since I have my photos stored in a folder and imported them into Photos as referenced files, I was looking at the option of syncing from a Folder instead, but that's also not a viable option for me as it works fine on the first sync and then on subsequent syncs it creates duplicates after duplicates.
6. Switching to iCloud Photos is also not an option for me as it only works for photos that are moved into the Photo library - it does not work with referenced files. I am using referenced files since I do all my actual photo editing in Photoshop and Lightroom.

I did find an alternative workaround that at least partially gives me what I am after: Shared Albums

I turned on "Shared Albums" in Photos, on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. I then created a shared album in Photos and added all the photos I want to sync to it. That way, I can view all the photos on my devices and on Apple TV I can also select a shared album as a screensaver source which is something that we are heavily using at home.

It's not ideal as there is no folder structure and none of the standard Photos features work for shared albums, eg. no searching, no people detection, etc., but at least I can view and show photos again.

On the plus side, it made it a lot easier to get the photos onto my wife's iPhone. And Shared folders don't count against your iCloud storage, so no need to spend any extra money.

I still hope that Apple fix the actual issue soon, but at least for me this works for now.

Good news, I just updated Catalina to 10.15.2 & at the same time iOS 13.3.1 on my phone. I gave it another go &......finally all those sub folders inside folders in albums actually synced!! Looks like they got it, identified the problem & we can sync all pics again! Yea! They are even in the order I set them up in. I say that as they love to auto organise stuff, this time not thankfully. :)

Just repeating the same process with my iPad, I'll come back if it doesn't work...

Well, I've got the similar issue and after long annoying months, I've got a solution which worked for me. Just repaired the Photolibrary opening the Photo app while pressing Command and Option at the same time. After resynchronizing the pictures with my devices, the problem is (at the moment) solved (fingers crossed...).

i'm not sure if anyone else has posted this - i've not been following this in awhile - but i did figure out a decent work around. apologies in advance if this is redundant. i had (and frankly still have) the same issue of not being able to sync albums from the photos app on my mac to my phone. under the "my albums" folder, i had organized my thousands of photos in specific year folders and then month albums within those years. in the last few months, none of the selected albums would sync.

i did get a decent alternative fix to work for me. it's a little messier than i would like, but i do now have the albums i want synced, on my phone. so, instead of having the albums i wanted to sync several layers down in nested folders, i pulled the desired albums out to live directly under the main "my albums" album and synced.

it works for me. again, my photos app isn't organized as well as i had it or would like it to be, but i'll take it for now.

hope this helps some of you.

Pending final Apple resolution in future update...the original post observation of;

“apparently it syncs the albums under the root "My Albums" but is not able to sync the albums that are inside a folder.”

provides the required info for the most simple stress free quick interim solution. Just select the desired the desired sub folder(s) with desired photos you desire but unable to sync, right click sub folder(s) and select “move...” which relocates sub folder to root “My Albums”, then go back to finder and under locations locate ios device to be synched then select relocated folder(s) under photos, apply and sync...worked like a champ 👌 after several days of following the recommendations of other Apple Community threads without success ! Its the “root” (of all evil) bug 🐜 so workaround and move on pending future update.

I can confirm, that on catalina 10.15.4 beta and iOS 13.4 photos sync is working fine again!

I am using local photos library (completly cloud-less sync) and it works sinc upgrading to beta - before i had the same issues reported here (not syncing, duplicates, ..).

Just wait for next os release or use beta if syncing is as urgent as for me.

Best regards.

What I can tell you is that I could solve all of my problems by doing the following:

• syncing the whole photos library to icloud (you may have to pay for it for a month), this may take a while
• have a look at icloud.com if all stuff is there (for me it was)
• switch off the icloud syncing on my macOS device (so all the data is on icloud only)
• delete the whole photo library file in ~/Photos (definitely make a backup before)
• switch on the icloud syncing again
• wait a long time while all the data from iCloud is copied to your macOS system
• witch off icloud syncing again, unsubscribe from the iCloud storage
• have a brand new Photo library with the new format introduced in macOS 10.15
• local sync to my iOS devices via USB cable using Finder now worked without a problem

No idea if this is also working for you, but for me it did. Please backup all of your data before doing the above. I mentioned that inside my Photo library a lot of old folders exist, which were no longer there after doing the above. So I used the (probably unbuggy) sync to iCloud to fresh up my local Photo library. Since this no sync problems occur, even in nested folders.

Good luck!

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