Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

Same issue here. Again - had this before on iTunes a few years back.

No sync of "Photos" albums from Mac to iPhone. It's sort of a disgrace that Apple isn't able to fix this with all their development capacity.

Let's hope these forums create some awareness.

Thank for your input. To clarify, did the photos in albums under subfolders also copy over? Please have a look at the original / first posting that opened this forum if you need further clarification. Thanks again.

Has anyone had any luck with this? I'm having the same problem - I have many, many photos organized by year and months into folders which I had been syncing back over to my phone. It does not work now. Even selecting the photo album/folders I want to sync and then re-syncing, does nothing. They do not go to my phone.

I have also been on the phone to Apple about this exact issue, and they seemed blissfully unaware of the issue. I wasted 6 hours trying to fix it, ended up with escalated tech support installing and adding a profile to track logs, and upload video of the issue happening. Long story short, it is now 9 days later, and they have just forgotten about me (or hoping I have given up and forgotten about them. Come on Apple - fix this issue (case ID 100926396675 if you care about your customers at all!).

Oh, and don't start me about all the other issues Catalina caused my computer. I ended up in restore mode and have done a clean install and manually replaced all files, apps, music, movies, tv shows, documents etc seeing as Catalina also killed my time machine backups. Nice work Apple, but a handy reminder to have back ups of your backups!

To clarify, did the photos in albums under subfolders also copy over? Please have a look at the original / first posting that opened this forum if you need further clarification. Albums in the root are syncing. Albums within folders not syncing is the problem that started this thread. Thanks in advance.

In my case, I have about 12,000 photos in year albums and some specific categories. On both my iPhone 7 Plus and iPad Air 3rd generation, syncing deletes the existing albums and leaves only those that originate from the device.

i use my iPad for sharing photos a huge amount ... is there any news if a fix to this?

Hugh

new news ...

I have copied three albums from the Photos app and put them into a folder on my desktop (as recommended by an earlier poster). Then sync'ed my iPad, and the three folders are there.

Now this was the way I used to do my sync'ing, but the Apple iTunes problems earlier this year got me to shift to using Photos - which in hindsight was much easier.

But this workaround works for the moment (and only until I start wanting to sync both my iphone and iPad from these files, as there is only one 'iPod cache' set up).

Hugh

I had the same issue, and if I ticked a box in any of the tabs to select a Photos album to sync or to modify an option, I could't even push the apply button because it was greyed out.

Then I read a comment on Reddit suggesting to untick all the sync checkboxes at the top of each tab and then push the sync button next to the storage bar at the bottom.

After the sync finished, I was able to tick back on my Photos sync, choose the albums I wanted to sync and finally apply the changes with all my Photos album back on my iPhone X.

Hope it helps.

Cheers

i just tried this a bunch of times with several different iterations - still nothing. i even tried taking the music playlists off my phone, resyncing, selecting those playlists again and the doing another sync. the music came back but when i tried to replicate with photos, nope. still not there.

i also have many, many years of organized photos and i can't get any of them back on my phone. i even tried creating a shared album to icloud and i couldn't even get that to work.

suuuuuuuuper frustrating.

More than one year that we struggle with this issue. It seems that Apple does not move if we do not use iCloud ... or I am a bit pessimistic and they will fix it. Personally this is completely messing up my photo workflow and I am considering moving to Windows 10 with a Surface environment. After more of 30 years with Apple, I am kind of disappointed. The key strong point of Apple used to be customer satisfaction....

Are you listening Apple?! I mean, is there anyone out there actually listening?! This is a disgrace! How could you possibly think about releasing something that would cause such havoc and heartache ~ not to mention loss of face on the part of your users! I've been saying for years that all Apple seems to be interested in is toys, when we long-term 'hard-core' Apples users, (who have spent tens of thousands on actual computers), are constantly being let down! My iMac is like a tortoise with Catalina! I have 32GB of RAM and I get a spinning beach ball every time I double-click my hard drive icon or open 'system preferences'. Why hasn't someone in Apple who has real clout come out and actually say, 'Sorry'?!

These are exactly my thoughts, too! I loved the whole Apple ecosystem: hardware, software and services. Most important was seamless integration and stability/quality. Therefore, it was ok for me to pay premium prices....for premium service and quality.

I am absolutely frustrated, that they do not understand the importancy of high quality software....this is for me the fundament of their eco system! And if they have to write them a support request due to a bug....and I have the feeling, that they ignore me (no answer to any of my support requests!)....I just feel as a cash cow.....

But in my case, the cow has the choice to move to another meadow...

To make it crystal clear: it's not only this one problem....in the last releases of MacOS an iOS i had tons of it...

Wow! I just discovered that I am having the very same issue since upgrading to Catalina. For several years now, I have had all of my family videos and photos synced between my iMac and my iPhone. I just now discovered that everything has suddenly disappeared from my iPhone. I don't know if it is because I was adjusting my iCloud settings in the System Preferences app earlier this afternoon or not.

But regardless, just now, I attempted several times to restore/sync all of my videos and photos back onto my iPhone -- a 256 GB XS Max running iOS 13.

After clicking on my iPhone's icon in the Finder window's sidebar, I choose "Photos" in the horizontal menu at the top of the iPhone's window in the Finder.

The option "Sync photos to your device from" is enabled, and the pull-down menu is set to "Photos".

The "Sync" option is set to "All photos and albums", and the "Options" option is set to "Include videos."

When I click on the "Sync" button in the lower right corner of the Finder window, the progress wheel next to my iPhone icon in the Finder sidebar starts to spin for barely a few seconds, apparently fails, and then I am presented with a small on-screen window informing me of which songs were not able to be copied to my iPhone.

I was already aware of these few troublesome songs; but that is NOT the point. I was NOT trying to sync my music. My music is ALREADY on my iPhone and appears to be okay. I was trying to sync my PHOTOS.

As I said, I tried to sync in the aforementioned manner several times, but all to no avail.

Then I noticed that there was a second option for "Pictures" under the pull-down menu next to the "Sync photos to your device from" option; so I chose that.

I again chose the options "All folders" and "Include videos".

However, the weird thing is, in the "Folders" window that is located below those options, the ONLY folder listed is "Lightroom". It is NOT even showing anything in HD/Users/My Name/Pictures/Photos Library/.

So, there is nothing I can even sync if I choose "Pictures" instead of "Photos".

If I go ahead and click on the "Sync" button anyway, the same thing happens as if I had chosen "Photos". In other words, the progress wheel next to my iPhone icon spins for a few seconds, and then I just get the same on-screen message regarding a few songs that cannot be synced.

I honestly don't know how this bug could have slipped past Apple before the release of Catalina. Personally, I consider it major.

I hope a fix is forthcoming soon.

Apple soon will release a solution.

They release more Emojis.

They care about us.

All we need is more Emojis.

We still sync our devices with 2008 usb speed in 2018 macs and 11 pro max devices, but who cares, they release Emojisssssssss

Hey all! I have a similar issue. I plug in my phone, open photos, and import all new photos. I then open finder, and click sync, but instead of sending over the new photos as it usually would, it deleted 8-10k of the photos on my device, then syncs them all back taking an hour plus. Lastly, I'm curious if anyone else is encountering that they cannot share photos from the photos app on their phone at all? I tried from the "from my Mac", photos, albums, etc. and when I click share, I could click airdrop, iMessage, mail, etc. and it just crashes the app. I even wiped the device entirely and started from scratch (did not restore from backup), and it didn't fix anything.