Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

I found a workaround, that really works!

Make shared-albums, they sync perfectly well. Only downside: you need to move every single photo one-by-one since there is no way in a shared album to resort them.

I am reading this forum for some time now, because I had this problem with syncing my photo’s.

After 58  pages, and still no solution, II tried something else:

Back to iTunes, but now in Windows (W10 via Parallels)

I installed iTunes, made sure my music would not be deleted and tried to connect to Photo’s

That didn’t work of course, the new photos library was not recognized.

So back to OSX. And to my surprise al my albums (My Albums) are visible in finder on my iPhone.

It is not working as it should be yet , but I can select all mij albums, if they are not in maps.

I admit, I am not an expert on OSX, so maybe someone else should try this option and explain what happens.

Oh, and before doing al this, I made my photos library the systemlibrary.

OMG!! OK, I finally think Apple are working on this.

So, I was doing the "smart album" work around all this time, and today I decided I would start over and see if I can get this to work.

disclaimer** I am using developer beta's for both macOS Catalina and iOS. - So, I would assume perhaps in the next public release there might be a change?

macOS 10.15.4 Beta (19E234g)

iOS 13.4

So I did a total restore (wiped) and set the iPhone 11 Pro Max up as a brand new phone.

Installed all my apps, sync'd some music (I don't use Apple Music), and I then tried to sync an album that is WITHIN A FOLDER, not a smart album, but an actual album!.

At first I selected one album, to test, rather than the whole lot.. and I got an error saying that the Photos Library is not ready? or something like that, so I Opened the Photos App, browsed the album I wanted to sync, and then left Photos.app open whilst I sync'd again.

Just as another few points I will mention

• When I re-sync, it still removes the content and then re-adds it all again... not the end of the world, but it would be good if they fixed that as well
• I use two types of 'camera devices' I take pictures with. Apple Devices are .jpg and .heic and are in Albums starting with [iOS] and my Canon RAW (CR2) photos are stored in the [EOS] Albums within the locations of the photos taken (Folder names)

I have a lot more to sync, and will let you all know how it goes. ! can't believe this appears to be working -

*fingers crossed*

In the screenshot below, the FOLDER name is [AU-ACT] Canberra & Jervis Bay and the Albums are below that root folder. It's been a long time since I have seen that !

After a couple hours, my sync finally completed. I'm using a smart folder to pull all photos and synching just that. It appears to have worked. 90 count difference between mac and phone, but out of 40,000, I'm not arguing. First time it copied new photos in about half a year. Will be interested to see if it holds with next synch

Last week I synced my phone, after removing all photos in the manner I've been forced to sync since the Catalina upgrade. This sync was successful in that it imported all photos and movies with no duplication. Today I attempted to sync new photos twice without removing the photos. The first time it actually removed about 30 photos and also some videos. The second time it removed about three thousand photos and some videos. It failed to sync by not adding the new photos. My workaround is to remove all photos and then sync again.

I ran the repair on Photos on my iMac 5K on 2020-02-02 REPAIRED LIBRARY - Option-Command and double-click the Photos icon - first it Repairs then it Rebuilds. I did a backup prior to this process. I ran the repair on the recommendation of someone in the Apple Community Forums around early February who said they had success syncing to iOS devices after this process. I ran it overnight since my Photos library is over 1.5 TB in size. It did not fix my issues, this was prior to the recent updates.

I didn’t restart in Safe Mode before or after - are you thinking that running the repair while in Safe Boot is part of the fix? And Syncing in Safe Boot is also part of the fix? Is that how you got yours working so far? Check and make sure your synced Album images match on your MacBook and on your iOS devices - especially in albums that contain both pics and vids - I am only missing 3 images or vids on two test albums on both of my iOS devices.

Re repairing the photos library, I had some success with syncing and getting albums in alphabetical order in February. Did not reboot in safe mode afterwards and use iCloud to sync my photos.

However my joy was short lived because next time I added anew album and set it on my Mac in alphabetical order it did not sync properly until I repaired library yet again.

Have spent ages with adviser on this and when I emailed after the new updates did not fix the problem, I had no reply...Guess he has given up trying to sort the problem 👎

i also have a major issue with connecting either my phone or iPad Pro by cable to myiMac. Photos does not recognise the vast majority of my photos have already been imported and wants to import them again as new photos. Totally bizarre...but seems to be an issue with the photos library to my mind.

wish Apple would sort it as it is the most annoying problem and has now been going on since September 19. Almost as bad as Covid 19

gvd1, Unfortunately I can’t offer a short-cut to figure out which images are missing on your iOS device. I’ve done this twice and both times it was via the brute-force method. Never figured out a way to automate it.

I have over 100 albums that range from 10-15 to 500+ pics in each. The first time I did this was four years ago and it entailed fixing/deleting a few hundred images. This time it was easier.

My approach is to make sure the sorting of the pics is identical in Photos and the iPad. I then write down the name of every album along with the number of pics in Photos and the corresponding number on the iPad. That identifies which albums don’t agree between the two.

The iPad is beside the iMac and I then scroll through each album comparing between the two. When I find a missing one on the iPad I do an edit in Photos and write down which ones I’ve tweaked. Once it is all done I do a re-sync and go through the process again to confirm if it worked. Very, very tedious, but it does identify the problem pics and which ones can’t be fixed by a minor image edit.

Yup, it takes hours to do this. And it isn’t really feasible unless the sort order in both devices is identical.

I have seen a few blanks and possible a couple of duplicates on the iPad. These usually correspond to pics that there are problems with in Photos. In some cases when I double-click on the problem pic in Photos another image launches into the edit mode. These ones I just delete from Photos. Never figured out a way to recover ones with this type of corruption.

This approach cleans things up but you will lose some images. Hope this helps.

I finally gave up. Effective 4/21, Microsoft gave everyone with a subscription 1TB of free space on OneDrive. I exported all of my files from Photos and uploaded them there. It took no time to remap things to albums. I'm finally free. 40,000 files, and everything loads perfectly on my phone now. Unfortunate solution, but if Apple cannot get their act together to fix their own software, they're going to lose people. Forcing people to use iCloud is a losing business model.

Seems the answer is to use iCloud to sync photos these days.

I started using and paying for iCloud storage when Apple first had the issue of syncing Mac photos across devices when they update iOS to Mojave and iTunes was not syncing properly.

since then, it worked like a charm until Catalina.

I have had lots of wasted hours with Apple support trying to solve the problem and have give up.

with the latest iOS on iPhone X and iPad Pro as well as macOS 10.15.5 ICAN sync photos across all my devices just by using iCloud.

when Itake photos on my iPhone they appear on my iPad and my iMac photos seamlessly. Also putting those photos into designated albums is reflected on all my devices.

My only problem now is that when I connect my phone or iPad to my Mac by cable, macphotos does not recognise my photos on phone or iPad as being already imported to my Mac and it wants to import them all again....duh! Seems this might be a issue with the Catalina version of the photos library not working correctly.

Still not 100% working as it should but certainly far better than not using iCloud and relying on finder syncs.

It seems so bad that Apple can’t get it right when google photos has not trouble syncing photos across all devices without even setting the sync in motion...so seamless

Hello everyone. I’ve been following this discussion since last autumn because I had the same problem. In October I created a discussion that focused on one aspect: During each sync after any changes, every single photo was removed from all my iOS devices and then all photos were reinstalled. It caused numerous duplicates and the photo count and storage used were erratic.

It’s not exactly what some of you are saying, but it’s certainly related. Here is the link to my original discussion: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250777933

I know you won’t be happy about this, but before my three-month trip to Asia I decided I couldn’t deal with this anymore. I bit the bullet and began to pay 99¢ per month for iCloud storage. For only a dollar a month everything has been working absolutely perfectly because since switching to iCloud Photos. For many years I preferred the syncing method but now because of iCloud (rather than syncing) I’m not stressed by Apple ignoring the syncing problem.

Yes there was a learning curve but in the end I’m happy with my decision. However this in no way explains why, over the past nine months, Apple can’t or won’t solve the syncing issue.

Actually this problem is only fixed if you have a machine recent enough to run iOS 13. It still does not work if your iOS device is too old to run 13. I have taken all my albums out of their nested folders and put them in the root level of hierarchy it does work but what a f***ing mess; the albums number in the many hundreds and scroll right off the screen. Very difficult to find something. If there was an easy to transfer them all to adobe PSE organizer I would but then there would be a problem with Apple TV. I guess I'm stuck with this mess until I can afford some new equipment!

Directory structure has never worked. I don’t think it’s even suppose to on you iOS devices.

As for you albums, double check that your total photo imported match the amount imported to your device. I was 10-15% less on my iOS devices and that didn’t included the photos that I have on my camera roll on my devices that haven’t been imported to my iMac.

Replying to pharmercist (and others who have made progress):

I have followed this issue(s) since the beginning and just repeating there is no specific pattern or fix that applies to everyone. It is some form of serious corruption in Catalina, and/or Photos library when Catalina was installed.

Different unpleasant side effects for different people and different fixes work for different people, and no fix will work for many.

I couldn't sync to my iPhone 6 (IOS 12) reliably initially no matter what I did. Then there was an early update to Catalina and suddenly, after several repairs to my Photos library, it all synced. Folders and albums on my iMac sync correctly to my iPhone 6. And this has stayed reliable. My initial corruption is gone?????

Unfortunately the initial problem is messy & varied, and I don't think Apple can solve all forms of it. They need to provide a tool that sucks the photos out of Photos correctly and then imports them back into a brand new Photos library without any corruption. If you you do this sort of thing yourself, from backups etc. it works for some but not others.

If you are up to date with upgrades and have tried most of the suggestions in this forum and it hasn't helped, then nothing, except (unlikely) special help from Apple, is going to solve your problem.

But keep protesting and providing feedback in Apple Support. https://getsupport.apple.com

Well, guys, the problem is definitely still there. This is really unacceptable.

I would be happy to use iCloud, but I use the photos app on the Mac as an archive (I guess like many other users). I keep a large library there, mostly because I want to keep all the Live Photos and the Portrait edit features (both live photos and portrait edit features are lost if the pictures are exported out of the iOS device or the mac Photos app). I have albums and smart albums to sort the selected pictures I want to have on my iOS devices.

iCloud syncs the entire library, and (as far as I know), it's not possible to choose only some albums to be synched (I know it's possible using 3rd party programs such as PowerPhotos, creating two different libraries, but I don't think it's the best solution). I would be happy to pay for iCloud, but I think this feature should be essential and it's pretty easy to be implemented; and mostly, it was implemented before on the iTunes synching.

Any beta tester or developer has tested this behavior on the new iOS 14 and the new MacOS 11 Big Sur?