Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

This a move backwards and very frustrating. It has taken months to organise all my photos into albums which are inside folders and now I cannot get any of my photos on my phone. I don’t see the point of still having the photos app if it has no functionality. There are so many simplistic things that Apple have over complicated and subsequently I have wasted hours trying to achieve a very basic action which I now find out has been pointless. Sort it out apple. I’m tempted to bin the whole apple eco system out of my life for good. Too much wasted tine, too many issues. Totally fed up.

Got on to a support person today. HE guided me to do a few things including a safe boot, switching of USB port and I finally can sync my photo albums from my Mac mini to my iPhone 7 now. Thanks to Apple Support.

Thanks for your information regarding tech assistance from Apple. But, there seems two differing experiences on this forum from Apple's response to users. One where they (Apple) admit to the problem and the other where they haven't heard of the problem. I have filled out several bug reports in IOS 13, Catalina, Photos, etc and have not heard a peep regarding this issue anywhere in tech news, etc. This leads one to think that it will just be pushed aside, leaving everyone to ultimately figure out how to work around this monumental bug. I will eventually call them to report. However, I am hesitant to do so - getting very frustrated when confronted with " we have not had any reports of this problem with photo syncing". Please, if anyone has found any stories or reports on this problem, please post on this forum.

I have abandoned all hope that Apple will fix this Major Bug/Flaw.

I have since move on and now store all of my photos on my Synology box. This does not allow me to have instant access on my iPhone or iPads, but I can use Synology's app to view and share.

Months in, I am very sorry that I upgraded to Catalina, it's been a disaster on my home Mac and even worse on my office Mac.

Lesson learned...

I agreed with your assessment. I spoke to an Apple rep the other day and he had no clue of the problem. Before I found this board, I was on the phone an hour with Apple support and they had no clue and when they were supposed to call me back after I ran an update to Catalina, they never did. I have left feedback on Catalina and Photos feedback site and nothing. I know that Apple has always been reluctant to acknowledge mistakes that they make but this software was a monumental mistake.

Same issue here. Spent a couple hours w Apple support rep (2nd level) today. Found this thread after getting on the phone with the rep, and told him that (based on this thread) hundreds of others are having the same issue with Catalina not synching Photos folders. Replicated the issue during a screen share, uploaded/sent diagnostic files to Apple. Support rep said engineer should get back to him within four business days (so likely after Thanksgiving). I did have success dragging a photo out of Photos onto my desktop, then using the Finder iPhone synch. Note that the photo could not just be sitting on the Desktop (Synch dialog wouldn't allow me to select it) -- it had to be moved INSIDE A FOLDER that itself was inside the Pictures folder. So at least I have a temporary workaround to get some photos onto my phone, if I'm desperate. :)

Guys, I’m not so sure it’s a problem only with Catalina. As said pages ago, I’ve destructively downgrade back to Mojave 10.14.3, and there are still problems of photo syncing on idevices upgraded to iOS 13 and above. Everytime I sync photos on Mojave with iOS 13 devices, unlike before where only new photos get added on and was a relatively quick process, now the syncing seems to go through the entire library (which takes a long time), then removes old photos already synced to the devices, and then finally re-adds those removed photos and syncs the new ones. Worst being duplicate photos are added on the sync. Example being ~15,000 photos already on device, on a new sync adding say only 100 photos, I will see photos on the device being removed and drop to ~8,000 photos (~7,000 removed), and the final sync will be ~19,000 (ie ~300 duplicates).

When I examine the duplicates, I will see one with the correct meta-data (eg geo-tags), and one without (only the date).

the only way to get an accurate photo count of 16,000 photos is to remove ALL photos from device first, and resync the 16,000 photos from scratch.

So I believe there are bugs in both the Catalina finder app when syncing, AND iOS 13.

I firstly synced with Sierra and Mojave from my NAS ... this worked sometimes good sometimes like you said only with a full resync - depending on different iOS versions.

So I imported all 50k Fotos in folders and subfolders manually to my Mac to get rid of this ... worked until iOS13 then syncing was pain again - not only photos well iTunes playlists got shuffled and random artwork ...

i read about Catalina will fix that ... well yeah it looks like the playlist thing now works but photos became worse.

as the basic reason to buy a Mac was audio video editing and syncing pictures and music between different iOS devices my while apple system became almost useless with the Catalina/13 combination

just to say that the mandatory adobe premiere update can’t burn DVDs anymore ...

i am now on my old xp machine with Cubase, Wavelab, iTunes and Magix Video ... the 5k iMac is for my child to play labyrinth

Ernoid: that is my thinking as well. I’ve mentioned in this forum about the duplication of photos error and having to delete all photos and then resync in order to get the sync to work as its suppose to. I noticed this problem after upgrading to IOS 13 while still on Mojave. After Catalina, the duplication problem continued, as well as, a new problem where photos that sync are those that are in albums but not in folders.

I've found a fix.

In short, change your backups to BACK UP ALL YOUR DATA TO THIS MAC.

If you like backing up to iCloud, you can do that as well, I have back ups in both locations, iCloud and then MAC.

I was having this frustrating problem too. Before changing backups, I moved my nested folders outside of the containing albums and it still wasn't synching anything at all. It would synch other data and then just end without adding photos. And it would uncheck all of the photo albums I had checked.

Looking at the wording under the GENERAL/BACKUPS tab:

For iCloud back ups it says, "Back up YOUR MOST IMPORTANT DATA on your iPhone to iCloud" I don't like to use iCloud to store my entire Photos Catalog because that would be too much data. I like having it on my computer with time capsule backups. Looking at how it synchs to iCloud by backing up "only" your important data, instead of the entire iPhone contents—this sparked the notion to change my back ups to BACK UP ALL OF YOUR DATA ON YOUR iPHONE to this MAC.

Before Catalina, I would make back ups to both iCloud and Mac. But since upgrading I hadn't done this and had only backed up to iCloud. So I went ahead and backed up a full copy to my MAC and this fixed my issue.

Like other postings in this thread, it would appear that you found something that worked on your system for some reason. I have my iPhone backups going to my computer and not to iCloud. Doesn't seem to correct the problem on my end. Unfortunately, I am finding that I have more issues other than the photo sync problem, since changing to Catalina. I have programs that are constantly crashing or my computer completely freezes with the famous rainbow ball.

Did you ever find a resolution dervatii? Latest MacBook Pro and iPhone here with all updates installed. I moved my albums out of folders on Photos on my Mac so they're directly under My Albums. Looked like it was going to work, but not all pics are synching. On iPhone some albums contain all pics, others just 1 pic of dozens. I think that's where you got to also?

Same Issue.

This is very disappointing. Especially before the Gift Giving Season. If Apple can't do the basic stuff, then why we should be loyal to this brand. The reason i moved to Apple in the Late Nineties was because of it's innovation and "quality" of hardware and software. This has been in such decline for last couple of years and it is getting worse with each OS X release.

Model Name: MacBook Air

  Model Identifier: MacBookAir6,2

  Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed: 1.7 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 2

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 4 MB

  Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

  Memory: 8 GB

  Boot ROM Version: 118.0.0.0.0

  SMC Version (system): 2.13f15

System Software Overview:

  System Version: macOS 10.15.1 (19B88)

  Kernel Version: Darwin 19.0.0

Please post a fix when available. I have not found a workaround that works with issue yet.

I'm in total ageement. I went to Apple because I thought they put out a better product (hardware & software) than windows and also to be able to keep all of my devices; iPhone, iPad & MacBook, along with my newest addition of an iMac in sync. I have posted on their feedback links for both Catalina & Photos and spent over an hour on the phone with them. For the most part, they tech support people either don't know of the problem or are not admitting to it.

They should come out with an update that will take the system back to Mojave until they have Catalina working as it should.