Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

Had the same problem. I did some other things as creating a new photo libraries, changing it to 'system library' and back again. But I also gave a 'forced restart' for the Finder and restarted my Mac. I am not sure (because of the other actions) but it looks like this did the trick.

same problem over here. I freaked out when I found some photos were missing. It seems like what has turned me away from Microsoft a few years ago now turns me away from Apple: The release of faulty, unfinished products.

@Apple, 10.15.1 is still not synching Photos albums that are within folders. Sync appears to work without errors, but no photos are copied to iPhone. Please fix asap. I have over 40K photos and 400+ albums, which must be organized into folders. Never had a problem synching via iTunes.

So, knowing that 10.15.2 will probably not fix this issue, my temporary workaround is to create a Smart Album called "iOS Sync" at the root level of the Albums folder, and use a bunch of "Album is ..." conditions to add all the albums I want to sync. Seems to work, but a total pain in the *** to set up :/

Craziest part to me is I have 0 sub albums. I have "My Albums", then about 10 listed under that, but no albums or folders within any of them. It will sync ALL videos, and them all but 50 photos the first sync. Then the 2nd, 3rd, etc. it starts removing around half of my library and then syncing back. Just doesn't seem that difficult to have it have this many issues.

So if I deleted all of the albums under "My Albums" would it work? Despite how much I hate having NO organization at all...

I've been attempting a basic workaround until this gets fixed. I have not been able to sync without problems since the switch to IOS13 or Catalina. This is occurring with a new device and new mac mini. So I've moved the albums I want to sync to the albums under the root "My Albums". The photos sync to the i phone as discussed. However, when I add a new photo to the library and sync again, the photos begin to duplicate and the library gets a double of almost all photos. The only way I have been able to solve this is to remove all photos in a sync and then resync. There is another thread that discusses duplicates but I have not heard it mentioned in this thread?

Even though the PhotosApp finally did sync with my iP11, I decided to temp fate and try to sync again, and sure enough, the photos are no longer on my iP11.

iMac, late 2015

MacOS 10.15.1, and

iPhone 11

iOS 13.2.2

Here is hoping Apple has a fix soon.

@Thommy : Unfortunately, I think there is another bug with Catalina. When you create a new album, you have to restart the Finder (hold option key and right clic on Finder) or your computer to see the new album. That isn't dynamic 🙁

I have this issue too...

Just wondering if anyone has heard anything from Apple on this?

So far I've tried restoring my device and even rebuilding the library in the Photos app from scratch. Nothing has helped.

One other thing I noticed is the Location album is not capturing any of the metadata assigned to the photos. Similarly the People album is also not populating. Again the information is captured on each photo.

It is really incredible that iOS- and Mac-users are confronted with these strange errors (which is still the case also with me now that I use OS Catalina 10.15.1. The problem has been already around for a while! You can expect Apple to provide reliable upgrades (e.g. from Mojave to Catalina) so that the important and frequently used synchronization of photos on iOS-Mac remains operational when iTunes is suddenly taken out of use.

My conclusion: Apple sends insufficiently tested - and even poor - software to the world and waits for users to beep. That is not the style of Steve Jobs!

Willem Bakker, The Netherlands

Well said! There was a time when I would say “it just works” when asked about Apple products. That doesn’t seem to be the case any longer. I’m encountering more and more struggles as the “ecosystem” grows. I thought things were supposed to get easier?

OK - it's been more than a month from your "elevation" to experts. have you had any follow up from Apple? and the funky sync with music through Finder is really bush league too. you mean you cant make an app that does this and looks better... 5 devices, and miserable after 3 updates to Catalina.

How do I 'uninstall' Catalina & go back to using Mojave? I am HATING everything to do with Catalina - the spinning beach ball is driving me crazy, and I really do not need the 'dark mode' anyway!

Don't know why I 'upgraded' to this very useless OS.

My Photos on iPhone used to sync perfectly to my Mac, and now I have to 'AirDrop' them to see /use them on my desktop.

Why do Apple think that this is a better way of doing things?!

I also looked at uninstalling this glitch ridden software but, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be easy. I’ve even considered taking both my MacBook Pro and my iMAC to where I bought the iMAC, who only works with Apple products and is one of their authorized dealers, to have them uninstall it. Just not sure I want or think I should have to go to that expense. I use Photo Stream and that still works and I can move the photos into albums. The problem is that I then can’t sync those albums to my iPhone or iPad.

I agree that Apple always thinks that their way is the better way.

For what it's worth, I'm sitting here running Catalina 10.15.1 sync my 11" iPadPro and iPhone Xs at the same time. If you put the iOS photo browsers in "All Photos" and scroll to the bottom, I can see "xxx Photos, xxx Videos" and "Syncing..." If I compare those two xxx values with the Photos app, I can see both iDevices slowly creeping up to parity with the MacOS library.And every minute or two you can see the thumbnails dynamically update as the data comes in.

But I'm plugged in the whole time this is going on and the Finder is giving me no indication that it's doing any syncing at all. In fact both iDevice icons in the sidebar are only showing the eject icon...no preparing to sync or active syncing feedback of any sort.

Further, my iPadPro seems to have stopped at 20,698 photos and 173 videos, as my iPhone continues to climb past both those numbers on the way to 21,858 and 192 respectively.

So it appears that syncing does work while the devices are plugged in, but there's no visible clue in the Finder. And then there's the iPad issue stopping.

Maybe this will be of help to everyone out there. And for just FYI, my library has nested folders...everything seems to be working.

Um, and now my phone has stopped short of the goal. Hmmm....