Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

I have the same issue. I do not use iCloud for photos. I have an iMac and a MacBook pro. I sync family members' iPad on the iMac and my iPhone on the MacBook Pro. Same issue with all devices. I cannot sync photos. I kept trying and finally they synced to my iPhone. Today I was looking at some photos and noticed that I have so many duplicates. So I decided to sync and voila - every photo has been deleted from my iPhone. I could not get them back. I decided to shut down the computer and booted it back up. Tried to sync and it seems like it is now copying all my photos back to my iPhone. The numbers are increasing and my albums are appearing again on my iPhone. My computer is taking forever to sync so I assume it's a good sign. But to have to do this with so many devices and each time I sync is painful. It takes over an hour to sync each time.

But wanted to note that shutting down and power back up the computer then sync to iPhone brought my albums of photos back.

Thanks for the info! Hope you get a response soon!

To those who keep suggesting using iCloud - we do know about that option and choose not to use it. We want/need to use USB. I have over 30k photos and won't be paying for extra storage for iCloud. Others are in the same situation.

I have had this issue where I normally connect by USB to my iPad from my Mac and try and transfer photo folders from an album - on installing Catalina I found like others nothing synched and the existing folders on my iPad were wiped off.

I have just finished my third call in a week from an Apple Tech who has finally declared to me on this occasion that this is a 'known problem and they are working on it" - basically watch this space for an upgrade.

Meanwhile he offered me this temporary solution that works(for me) -

Connect your iPad and Mac together,

Go to Photos,

Select a sub folder

Choose - 'File' - 'Export' - 'export album' - export'.

Go to Finder

Your folder from 'photos' is divided into the dates the photos were taken will be listed in 'Downloads',

Then -

On the iPad page select the 'photos' tab,

Where it says 'synch photos to your device from -' select from the dropdown 'choose folder',

Select - 'folder' , choose one of the dates folders - 'open' - 'apply',

By some miracle the photos should transfer to your iPad - they did on mine.

Its not the best but you can by this move photos across albeit not in an album format,

hope this helps someone

It looks like you are talking about iCloud, which is not the problem here. This thread is about syncing albums on Photos on a Mac with an iPhone/iPad. More specifically, the albums within a folder is not syncing (i.e. albums in the root is OK).

Thanks much for sharing this with us. As an alternative, I pulled out the key albums from their respective folders and put it directly under My Album. After syncing, I at least have the most important albums/pictures on my iPhone/iPad this way. I left the other albums in their current folders. Hopefully, Apple will fix this problem and I will eventually get all of them synced to my iOS devices.

Sorry but I hate what Apple have done with Mac Os Catalina has done to my photos!!!!!

I don't want to store photos in Icloud or search by dates, days..etc...I'm getting old I can't remember what date I took a photo.

I like to manually manage my photos across devices in "Albums".

I want to search my photos by "Albums" not dates. !!

Apple Poor customer service! FIX IT.

Same here. No one album in folders is copied. And not all photos are synced from the albums in the root. I have an album in the root with 105 photos and only 37 are copied on the device.

I had a couple of very long calls with screen sharing with Apple support and no answers.

Don’t forget that photos also don’t sync to Apple TV.

With all that we’ve experimented, and the fact that photos sync fine when directly from a folder on the HD outside of the Photos App, I wonder if it’s Photos App problem (database and iPod Photo Cache, etc)?

I’ve rolled back to Mojave (reinstalled everything), and iTunes + Photos App on Mojave is now taking forever to sync to my iPhone 11 Pro (hours for 17K photos). What we are seeing on Catalina (without iTunes now) maybe a legacy Photos App problem, or my Mojave/iTunes/photos problem maybe an iPhone 11 Pro issue.

Apple products and software used to “JUST WORK”. Mr. Jobs must and should be turning in his grave. What a shame Mr. Tim Cook....

I have updated my iPad mini 5 to OS 13.1.3 as suggested by technical support.

I have also upgraded the Catalina iMac OS but I notice it is still designating itself 10.15

I have again tried syncing my photo albums with mixed success. Most of the albums have returned but not all the photos have synced within each album.

Using an app called “Exif viewer” I have looked at the file size of photos that have synced and it appears that only small sized photos sync ie those ones that have been taken on an iPhone or an older compact camera. Photos that have been taken on a new DSLR ( a Nikon in my case) which create large files do not sync.

Contrary to what I was told - unless I misunderstood - when photos are synced between the Mac and iPad/iPhone they are, or were, optimised to fit the appropriate screen size.

So for example a photo which is 30 MB in the Photos app on the Mac is reduced to 1.2 MB on the iPhone (which was last synced via iTunes)

Where as a photo which is 13.5 MB in the Photos app has been reduced to 6.2 MB on the iPad mini 5 when synced via Finder.

In other words when I used iTune to sync photos they were optimised for the smaller screen but in Catalina the syncing process using Finder does not do such a good job of optimisation. Hence the hiatus that we have tried to resolve with technical support representatives. 

I think the truth is no amount of technical support will solve this problem since it has not been created by the way I use the Mac but it is a fault that has been introduced by Apple's engineers when they wrote the Catalina operating system which removed iTunes. Thus it will only be resolved by a more substantial update to OS 10.15.

tokomaru,

It’s worth nothing that when I was on Catalina, I also deleted the iPod photo cache folder within the system Photos Library.

Photos obviously failed to sync, but interestingly, no new folders or files are created under iPod photo Cache. This folder is where I those optimized (size-reduced for your iDevice) photos should be kept.

So again, maybe a Photos App problem as the application failed to create optimized photos to be then moved to the iDevice.

The most funny is about the names from Apple's team.

Genius, engineer, and and and.

They don't do anything, they don't know nothing.

I had an issue a year ago. I contact them once and after never replied to my phone calls, even i left many messages on voice mail.

Now about the sync of course it doesn't work.

The only way and works great is to create a folder everywhere except photos app.

In the pictures folder will be fine.

And after you have to choose the location to sync.

Works great with no issues.

Apple don't even care about us.

I just spent 4h being bumped around the Apple support like hot potato, with no-one knowing what Im talking about, and pretty much just viewing my screen without resolution... I got to senior advisor, and was told that

A: I tried everything possible to resolve the issue (Restarting both, dropping files via wi-fy (big fail: got them all to my camera) I tried everything (short of tipping the system and re-installing it) and no fix....

B: it is known issue and fix is being worked on

C: a special request for fix on individual bases has to be sent out by senior advisor, and answer should come in 4 days. (No guarantees though, because last time - 4 yrs a go- my resolution was to make extra 15 steps for each photo upload. So functional fix might not be helpful. Lets hope for update that will work this issue out.

I should get call back on Friday so I will post whatever fix they will come up with...

After upgrading to Catalina 10.15 and restoring to a new iPhone 11 Pro with iOS 13.1.3 i had the same problem. My whole pictures folder (with all subfolders) are not be synced anymore. The iPhone sync status in finder also never show an clear status and could mostly only be stopped by unplugging the cable.

I deleted the subfolder 'iPod Photo Chache' which is located as subfolder at your - main to sync folder - on my MacBook Pro. Reconnected the iPhone (via USB cable) and ... after a new run of preparing your pictures for synchronisation (time depends on the size of your picture library), the albums are synced to my iPhone.

Hope that helps you too,

Marcus