Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

Thanks JNA2 - I thought it was worth a try even though it sounded like you stored your pics outside of Photos initially and that might have been your issue and why repairing permissions would help your situation? I tried it anyway, along with a reinstall of Catalina and a repair of Photos Library... no change for me - while I can sync albums nested in folders, several albums are missing images when you compare the numbers count between Photos on iMac and the albums on my iPhone 11 Pro - have only done 1 sync after first removing all the pics to have a clean slate on iPhone. Have not yet tested the sync on iPad Pro. Usually second and third syncs for me is when I start to get random blank images on my iOS devices - and oddly enough NOT the same images are blank white on my iPhone as they are on my iPad Pro...

To anyone that has had initial success, did you continue to see success on your 2nd or 3rd syncs, etc... are you comparing your image count between your Mac and your iOS devices? at quick glance everything looks fine to me, but when you compare the image count I will see 825 pics, 3 videos when it should be 828 pics and 3 videos... etc... but some albums are perfect - at least after 1st sync.

At least for me the syncing albums nested in folders is now possible after the last update to Catalina 10.15.4 - but still getting blanks and missing images. Will update after more testing.

So, the struggle continues.

Doing more investigation into my problem which is - SOME albums contain images that appear black when synced from MAC to either my iPad, or wife's iPad. The problem does not exist on our iPhones.

I have spent over 45 hours with Apple Support over the last 10 days maximising my time on furlough!

I have experienced some great support, and some awful!

The problem is not resolved.

It does appear that the majority of the pictures come from a handful of albums. All of these albums happen outside of our home country of UK. A lot of these were Live Photos. We tried, repair tool, restoring iPads, trying in a new photo library, duplicating and deleting originals. The only thing that worked to an extent was duplicating, although one album just wouldn't budge and never display.

Now they all display on IPAD if shared, just not via sync.

I am going rogue now and trying my own solutions, unfortunately prepared to encounter some cost for iCloud which is unfair as being pushed into it. The dilemma here is only one can sync via iCloud to the mac - ME - as the Mac is against my ID.

My Questions i'm hoping for support on, Could we copy the library, add to External hard drive, and then create new user on MAC with her id, therefore allowing her to sync via i cloud to that version , and me to the normal.???? I think so but want to check?

And also, for the golden ticket, could i create new user on the mac, and then user the SHARED folder in the MAC (MAC/Users/Shared) and move the whole library there. Therefore i can login to the mac as normal, and when here have it syncing via i cloud, and my wife can login to her user and have the SAME library sync via her iCloud id?

Thoughts?

I Agree!

I have mentioned this here several times before. I have moved all of my information to a Synology NAS and I use their application for photos called PhotoStation6.

And while I understand that not everyone wants to do this or has the funds to do it I can tell you that it works, PERFECTLY!

There are two downsides (aside from an additional hardware investment).

1-It does not Sync with with an iPhone or iPad, so if you want the images on your device it might not be for you.

2-The NAS must remain ON all of the time (although there is a sleep mode) if you want to access your images.

It does have an app that allows you to connect to the NAS, anytime, anywhere and it's crazy fast.

It allows for Image-GEO Tagging and Meta data and you can do it in batch form.

It allows you to back-up to Google-Drive thru their Sync program and then even view images in Google Photos.

I started out using the Synology a few years back as a back-up to my iMac, but now it holds all of my data, not just images...and I'm am not looking back!

Apple has forgotten about its core base, the people that put them on the map, Designers, Photographers, Illustrators, etc, and that's sad to see.

So if you have the time and the funds you may want to check out Synology.

Good Luck All!

Just my ramblings: (I posted this a few weeks ago)

There is still *some* evidence that the first install of the new Catalina caused random corruption of the Photos library for some (but not all) users.

Subsequent MacOS updates and repairs to the Library solve the problems for some users but not all.

(and for some the fix worked for a while and the Library corrupted again later!).

I think Apple needs to also address this corruption - I.e. not just fix Catalina to eliminate future Photos problems but work out how to fix the Photos problems existing users are having - i.e. a new method to repair exisiting corrupted Libraries.

Yes, this has been my routine to sync as well. This week I tested adding a few photos and syncing as before IOS 13/ Catalina and the result was unfortunately the same. During the syncing process, I can observe the photo count on my iphone. First, a percentage of the photos are removed, then the photos start to be added. Eventually, the count of photos added surpass the number you can observe on the finder as the total number of actual photos that the sync will produce. This sync produced many duplicate photos in the “curated” view of photos and also in the albums section of photos.

It looks like we have to continue to spend several hours everytime we have to sync. Apple should add that to their step by step guide to syncing using USB cable via finder....on this help page of theirs: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210611

I do not know if my photos library is corrupted. All devices and mac are less than a year old. I have also read the many recommendations from several posts here on sucessful syncs but have yet to hear from other users to confirm this.

I didn’t check all of them for complete transfer as I have hundreds of albums. I did however check a number of them and they seemed ok. I do remember previously before the latest updates that there were a large number of photos missing. Hash photos in the App Store seems to do a decent job again it has a problem with folders but seems to extract the albums well (free version)and seems to have some decent add ones for a small fee.

d6v1d wrote:

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?

So do you manually backup your photos from your devices to your Mac? Can you elaborate on how you do that? Having Photostream enabled used to achieve this for me, as it just kept storing and storing on my Mac, however, it doesn't include videos;

Portrait & Live Photos losing their features outside of Apple's ecosystem is simply NOT TRUE. I went to my Google Photos (where I backup all my photos) after I read this from you to confirm -my photos retain their Portrait & Live Photos features when they're backed up

I don't believe that this has been an issue from the beginning and still hasn't been completely resolved. Only last week I was finally able to upgrade to Catalina. And only tonight discovered that all the albums (in folders and not) that I formerly synced to my iPhone with iTunes were no longer on my phone. I (finally) found the dialog that used to be in iTunes lurking in the Finder (it makes sense, but it's not highlighted in any update tour). As previously set in iTunes, the settings for Syncing Photos was "Selected Albums" and "Include Videos", but then looking at the list of albums actually selected, there were none. And indeed, there were no photos "From My Mac" on my iPhone.

Couldn't the development team merely keep the old iTunes functionality? This is clearly a poor effort. When backup and sync was the province of iTunes, this worked. Not only that, but as one selected specific albums or folders in iTunes, it would display the number of photos included in the selection. No more.

So it seems that some of the bugs reported above have been fixed, but fundamentally Catalina "sync Photos" in the Finder just forgets the work we've done in previous versions to sync our photos to our phones. I am not a fan of AI-curated albums. I spend a great deal of effort organizing and maintaining our photos. So, please, Apple, respect the work that we do and stop with the poor QA and partial fixes!

I too will be utilizing Photostation by Synology. I’ve given up with the Photos app. This will allow me to migrate away from any proprietary application and use/view my photos across any platform. Their DS File app has been working flawlessly and so has their DS Video.

To highlight my frustration I sync’d my devices one last time before the migration and each came back with different quantities of sync’d photos and videos.

iMac:

6522 photos

83 videos

iPad:

6448 photos

69 videos

iPhone:

6456 photos

69 videos

🤬

I think you will be VERY Pleased with Synology & PhotoStation.

I was using it for years before the Catalina problem and once I saw/knew an Apple solution was not at hand, I abandoned the Photos App and removed Catalina from my iMac as it was also creating havic.

Good Luck!

Same Apple-Shame here.

The last syncs get different results each. The Photos.App on the iMac shows always a correct amount of pictures. But on iPad Pro and iPhoneX its like....here the numbers form the last days:

• iMac (Photos.app): 33'835 (correct number)
• iPad Pro 12,8": 23'581>sync>39'979>sync>39'979>sync>25'979>sync>48'718>sync>37'079>sync>25'591>sync>29'831
• iPhoneX: 40'164>sync>38'2719>sync>26'428>sync>31'880>sync>29'630>sync>22'008>sync>19'089>sync>44'507

I mean, its like playing roulette in Las Vegas. It is such a shame that a company like Apple is not able to deliver a software which simply syncs albums (=folders) from an Apple device to another Apple device. They don't have the technology, they have software engineers who are not able to do this, this is the state of the art of Apple software technology. It's Tim Cook's Apple, not Steve Jobs' Apple.

Apple is not going to fix this. We have to find other solutions, like Synology NAS server. Unfortunately this costs again more money after investing a lot to expensive Apple devices, which are not able to deliver such a basic function like syncing photos. If I were in US I would consider a lawsuit...

ErnoidHK88 This is getting interesting...

I was able to identify some of the albums associated with the Key Photo in the People Album and decided to just sync a few of those albums with the addition of an album that didn't have anyone noted in the People Album, let's call it X Album. I also thought that there may be a link to this problem with photos used for the image in Contacts. I edited my contacts with faces from my iPad Photos because I could scale the picture easier in the iPad version. My contacts are shared with my iMac and all iDevices.

I prepared for a sync by "removing" the photos and selected the same albums. Of the six albums, five had the "Syncing.." note at the bottom of the the album on my iPad. This supports your idea. The X Album sync'd properly no message at the bottom.

I then edited a contact with a photo from the X Album on my iPad. Sync'd again. Initially the X Album did not have the "Syncing..." note but a few moments later it appeared! At least that's what I think happened. It confirms your thought about latent processing.

I also checked the photo count of an album that has "Syncing..." and noticed that on the iPad, a photo was missing. Accounting for photos on my iMac to the iPad I determined it was the photo used for the face in the People Album.

It appears "Syncing..." appears at the bottom of the album when this situation is encountered. If the album syncs properly and photos only take up one page of my iPad, no note appears. If there is more than one page of photos being displayed on the iPad, a count of photos and videos appears at the end of the album.

I have not experienced the duplicates or blank photos. I my not using iCloud photos or Photostream. I normally migrate any photos taken on an iDevice and import or AirDrop to my iMac, then delete from iDevice. I put the photos into an album and eventually sync desired albums to my iDevice. I use the iMac as my repository for photos. I also keep a copy of the albums as a separate folder in Documents as one of my backups.

Thanks for your hypothesis as it helped me understand some of the peculiarities.

I have seen the "Syncing..." note in a couple more albums that I cannot ensure that it was a result of previously mentioned Key Photo or Contacts process. I don't think I will troubleshoot this further as I think it's time for Apple to ante up and resolve this completely. Heck, macOS 14 will soon be out. I will wait for awhile before I upgrade. For now, I'm not sure how to get Apple's attention on this matter.

And yes, the Contacts process appears to cause the "Syncing..." notation on sync'd albums. I use Contacts on my iPad to update the contacts with a photo of the person from photos in the Photo app. It's easy to scale the headshot. The image appears with texts and phone calls on the Mac and iDevices as well as on my car's display.

For others having the problems with blank photos and/or duplicates, I have not encountered this problem. I would give it a try to repair the photos library by holding down Option & Command keys as you click on the Photo app on the Mac. This will cause your Shared albums and people to be rebuilt after the repair is complete on the Mac. Good Luck

I have found that clearing my iPhone library before adding to it seems to work for my iPhone 11 & iPad Pro. iTunes music is a drag as albums go missing from my MacBook Pro touch-bar. Can’t wait to see what new disasters await for the next operating system Release. Still it stops us getting board.😂