Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

debtfree101, if you read further back in this thread, you will see that this possibility has been suggested before. However, it is speculation at best, which Apple frowns upon in these forums. Myself, as I mentioned earlier, when I discovered that syncing was not working, I went ahead and bit the bullet and reactivated my 50 GB/month iCloud account. Yes, I didn't like doing so, not because of the price -- what is $1? -- but because I don't like storing personal data in the cloud. At any rate, it took about 24 hours to sync 304 family videos and just under 1,000 images to my XS Max iPhone. Once Apple fixes this syncing issue, I intend to deactivate my iCloud account again.

Today I was able to synch new photos on my phone to my Mac without using iCloud. Used my phone charger and the Finder tab. As others have mentioned once there it looks like it used to on the iTunes app. I think there has been an update and it's not so glitchy now. I was also able to send the albums I wanted on my phone back over. It took less than 15 minutes.

Side note: I don't really care if Apple "frowns on speculation on the forums". I view this as the place they can get a pulse on what their customers issues, thoughts and concerns are.

Hope the rest of you are able to get your photos taken care of!

KWSCOTT72, I think you missed my point. So let me be clear. If we lean too far towards speculation regarding Apple's possible intentions regarding any particular issue, they will kindly send you a private message in which they inform you that they have either edited your post, or deleted it altogether. I speak from experience. A while back, we were discussing an issue in a particular thread -- I can't remember what the issue was now -- but a few of us made some comments regarding Apple's possible motivations. I got the private message, and my message was edited. That is why I made my above comment regarding the iCloud issue. Take it for what it's worth.

Today was the first time I tried syncing my photos from my iMac to my iPhone (both are running the latest software) since upgrading to Catalina. I also have my albums in folders. During the sync it removed all of my albums that had previously been transferred from my iMac but did not put them back. Now I can't get them back on my iPhone

I spent over an hour on the phone with Apple and the tech rep I was speaking to did not seem to be aware of any issue. He had me install an update for Catalina and said he would call me back. We are now an hour past the time he was going to call and doing the update did not correct the problem.

Updated to 10.15.1, iP11 also has the latest update.

Nada! Zippo!! Zilch!!!

Photos will still not sync from my iMac to my iP11

Apple, if you're reading, can you please give your user base an update as to when this bug fix may occur?

Thank you

What a joke this is.

I remember my 'previous' photos issue regarding Time Zones, having to change the system clock to import photos from different zones so they all sit in line (because apple assumes you sync everything with the cloud!).

Anyway i have this same issue. i spent three weeks manually importing 242,000 photos into the new photos app (yes i started fresh and did a phone clean import, carefully moving photos to albums and folders where i wanted.) - and guess what?.. same issues ... i have folders, and in the folders i have albums. I even have folders in folders, with albums within. Very disappointed with this. iCloud is not an option as my photos library is 2.34TB!! so, i am not paying for that capacity per month - not to mention, i really don't want to trust a cloud service with all those photos in case something happens !..

i can sync the photos in albums at the top level hierarchy (so where the medic types are (Panorama, Selfie, Video etc), but as soon as there is a folder it doesn't work.

anyway, i feel like this problem will be an issue that wont improve, how do we get the attention of Apple? an Apple store is 2 hours drive from me, and they would likely want my computer and we will come to the same conclusion ... i don't have apple care, but i don't think i should have to have Apple Care... this is a feature that does not work.

Has anyone tried to see maybe if its iOS that's the issue??? i will do some more testing this afternoon - maybe create a

new library and put some photos in there and see what works and what doesn't. So disappointed..... every time i google answers it alwyas refers to people having issues with iCloud... not everyone uses iCloud for storing music and pictures and video. ... grrr.

sorry for my rant

also, i would like to mention (and this has been happening for a while now), if i were to sync 4 albums for example, by moving the album out of the folder,) the 4 albums will sync. If i then go and try and sync another album or albums, the sync will remove ALL the sync'd photos i had just sync'd. and then "re-sync" them .... it a bit tiresome... surely the imac knows what has just been sync'd??? the check box on the screen says that that album is sync'd !! why remove the album and delete all the photos, just to re-sync and start it all again!!!?? - How do we contact Apple? email the photos engineer?? lol

I have been following this thread, thinking that I would wait to upgrade to Catalina after Apple fixed this issue of photo albums not syncing from Mac to iPhone 11Pro. But when I realized that I couldn’t sync my music from my Mac to my new phone without upgrading to Catalina, I took the plunge. Music synced fine, although it took a couple of hours. Then I moved each photo album that I wanted to sync between my mac and my iPhone from each respective folder of photo albums to the root of albums. At first I did one album at a time. Once that worked I synced a few at a time. It’s not a perfect solution, only a temporary work around, but I now have about 15 albums on my Mac that have successfully synced to my iPhone. Once Apple fixes this issue I will need to move each synced photo album back into their respective folders. Until then at least I have some selected photo albums on my phone. It’s a little bit of good news.....

Apple needs to fix this issue. Even before the Catalina update iCloud syncing took forever over a wifi network of 350mb/s operating at optimum speeds. Data syncing wasn't much better as OneDrive often faired much better with documents I needed to use after scanning with cloud based scanning apps. The photo syncing is a combination between a slow cloud based service I pay $10/mo for at 2 TB of "possible space" and a faulty software issue between Catalina and other Apple products. Fix it or I'm reverting back to Mojave. At least then I can use my VHS to digital video editing software. Why is it that every update we have as Apple customers seem to remind me more and more of the old PC days and the headaches that inevitably ensued with hardware and software issues? At this rate Apple will be selling us GeoCities website service as cloud space and Safari will ask us to upload internet browser add ons that crash our phones and iMacs within in 5 years. 

Wow. Brilliant. It won't help everyone, but this helped me. I only wanted two folders of photos on my iPhone, the one of our cats and another album of selected photos. So, by moving those albums to sit under 'My Albums' instead of being sub-folders, I was finally able to get the photos I wanted on my iPhone.

Maybe this trick will help some others as well: if you can live with just a few albums on your phone, move them under 'My Albums' and then synch your iPhone through Finder.

Thanks Diego!!!

I have thought about doing the same thing. As irritating as it is, I will take the plunge and rename each of my albums so they at least have some order to them (I have mine in folders for each year).

By the way, I have yet to get the phone call back from the Apple Tech Support Rep.

I have the same problem (iMac + iPad 5th generation/iPhone6S) but I realised that the sync works only if I choose to sync ALL photos and albums; syncing specific albums or folders does not work. It seems to work for "People" too. Of course I'm not likely to need ALL of my photos on my IOS device. Looks like a bug.

I found this issue only occurs to photos that are not stored in the Photos library directory. I have deselected the “Copy items to the Photos library” checkbox in preferences, because I don't trust Photos with my photos. The odd few that somehow ended up there anyway do sync with my iPhone.

That possibly explains why relatively few people complain about it and why others see what looks like a random set of photos that sync.

My photos are stored/copied to the Photos Library always - my Photos Library is about 1.5 TB in size and i have the same issue that the original post in this thread was discussing - that pics in albums nested within Folders will not sync to iOS devices. Like many here, I cannot use iCloud because my Photos Library is huge with nearly 150,000 pics and I don’t have high speed internet, not to mention it likely wouldn’t fit in the maximum 2TB iCloud storage available even if cost was not an issue at $10/month. I use and need iCloud storage for other things - and do not used it for Photos though I wish I could if size and upload speed wasn’t a constraint. I did find that when I had synced (using direct connection from my iPhone 11 Pro or iPad Pro to my iMac 5K running Catalina) an album not in a folder, but simply put under My Albums as the workaround many have suggested, my iOS devices re-syncs the entire set of pics every time as if from scratch which takes a long time depending on number of pics - though I have not tested this since recent updates to all devices, given everyone is still saying it’s not working - like others, I am waiting for the update that the Upper Level Tech Support agent told me Apple is working on. Fingers crossed.