Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

I am suffering from this issue as well - none of my Albums are syncing to iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.

Here are some updates/tips:

1. I've filed a bug report using Feedback Assistant right after Catalina launched which is still open and resolved.
2. I've also been in contact with a Senior Adviser since early December. We did some troubleshooting to confirm the issue initially. I reached out to him after Catalina 10.15.3 and iOS 13.3.1 were released and still didn't fix the issue. He assured me that it's a known issue that is still being worked on. While that might be true, it certainly seems that this is not a high priority issue for Apple to fix. Makes you wonder if any of the programmers working on these areas actually use their own software...
3. I tried moving all my Albums in Photos under the main 'My Albums' and while that actually syncs the albums, it only syncs smaller photos (seemingly up to 1280 pixels wide), so that's not a viable workaround for me.
4. Syncing using a Smart Album doesn't work either, it only syncs smaller photos (seeemingly up to 1280 pixels wide), so that's not a viable workaround for me.
5. Since I have my photos stored in a folder and imported them into Photos as referenced files, I was looking at the option of syncing from a Folder instead, but that's also not a viable option for me as it works fine on the first sync and then on subsequent syncs it creates duplicates after duplicates.
6. Switching to iCloud Photos is also not an option for me as it only works for photos that are moved into the Photo library - it does not work with referenced files. I am using referenced files since I do all my actual photo editing in Photoshop and Lightroom.

I did find an alternative workaround that at least partially gives me what I am after: Shared Albums

I turned on "Shared Albums" in Photos, on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. I then created a shared album in Photos and added all the photos I want to sync to it. That way, I can view all the photos on my devices and on Apple TV I can also select a shared album as a screensaver source which is something that we are heavily using at home.

It's not ideal as there is no folder structure and none of the standard Photos features work for shared albums, eg. no searching, no people detection, etc., but at least I can view and show photos again.

On the plus side, it made it a lot easier to get the photos onto my wife's iPhone. And Shared folders don't count against your iCloud storage, so no need to spend any extra money.

I still hope that Apple fix the actual issue soon, but at least for me this works for now.

Good news, I just updated Catalina to 10.15.2 & at the same time iOS 13.3.1 on my phone. I gave it another go &......finally all those sub folders inside folders in albums actually synced!! Looks like they got it, identified the problem & we can sync all pics again! Yea! They are even in the order I set them up in. I say that as they love to auto organise stuff, this time not thankfully. :)

Just repeating the same process with my iPad, I'll come back if it doesn't work...

Well, I've got the similar issue and after long annoying months, I've got a solution which worked for me. Just repaired the Photolibrary opening the Photo app while pressing Command and Option at the same time. After resynchronizing the pictures with my devices, the problem is (at the moment) solved (fingers crossed...).

i'm not sure if anyone else has posted this - i've not been following this in awhile - but i did figure out a decent work around. apologies in advance if this is redundant. i had (and frankly still have) the same issue of not being able to sync albums from the photos app on my mac to my phone. under the "my albums" folder, i had organized my thousands of photos in specific year folders and then month albums within those years. in the last few months, none of the selected albums would sync.

i did get a decent alternative fix to work for me. it's a little messier than i would like, but i do now have the albums i want synced, on my phone. so, instead of having the albums i wanted to sync several layers down in nested folders, i pulled the desired albums out to live directly under the main "my albums" album and synced.

it works for me. again, my photos app isn't organized as well as i had it or would like it to be, but i'll take it for now.

hope this helps some of you.

Pending final Apple resolution in future update...the original post observation of;

“apparently it syncs the albums under the root "My Albums" but is not able to sync the albums that are inside a folder.”

provides the required info for the most simple stress free quick interim solution. Just select the desired the desired sub folder(s) with desired photos you desire but unable to sync, right click sub folder(s) and select “move...” which relocates sub folder to root “My Albums”, then go back to finder and under locations locate ios device to be synched then select relocated folder(s) under photos, apply and sync...worked like a champ 👌 after several days of following the recommendations of other Apple Community threads without success ! Its the “root” (of all evil) bug 🐜 so workaround and move on pending future update.

I can confirm, that on catalina 10.15.4 beta and iOS 13.4 photos sync is working fine again!

I am using local photos library (completly cloud-less sync) and it works sinc upgrading to beta - before i had the same issues reported here (not syncing, duplicates, ..).

Just wait for next os release or use beta if syncing is as urgent as for me.

Best regards.

What I can tell you is that I could solve all of my problems by doing the following:

• syncing the whole photos library to icloud (you may have to pay for it for a month), this may take a while
• have a look at icloud.com if all stuff is there (for me it was)
• switch off the icloud syncing on my macOS device (so all the data is on icloud only)
• delete the whole photo library file in ~/Photos (definitely make a backup before)
• switch on the icloud syncing again
• wait a long time while all the data from iCloud is copied to your macOS system
• witch off icloud syncing again, unsubscribe from the iCloud storage
• have a brand new Photo library with the new format introduced in macOS 10.15
• local sync to my iOS devices via USB cable using Finder now worked without a problem

No idea if this is also working for you, but for me it did. Please backup all of your data before doing the above. I mentioned that inside my Photo library a lot of old folders exist, which were no longer there after doing the above. So I used the (probably unbuggy) sync to iCloud to fresh up my local Photo library. Since this no sync problems occur, even in nested folders.

Good luck!

Markus

Good news.

I have been reading and posting here since the thread started. Ignored most of the post in the last 6 months as many people claimed there was a fix, while others simply didn’t understand the problem or was talking about something else like cloud sync issues instead. I just kept ignoring all the thread notifications.

Saw Nogee43’s reply above, and it has motivate me to confirm the following. With the latest iOS update (13.6) and OSX (10.15.6):

• Albums no longer need to be in root level [that was fixed a while ago],
• No more duplicate photos being synced (usually one with all the metadata, and one with missing metadata like geo-tags, etc.) [this was also fixed sometime go],
• The problems where incremental album syncs (I.e. selecting an additional album to sync) would render whatever was previously synced at the iDevice being messed up (e.g. missing or duplicate photos) is no longer a problem. This fix happened with the recent software updates. This means, you no longer have to unsync everything before doing an incremental album sync,

However, and I believe this aims directly at Nogee43’s observations:

• It seems you will still encounter incomplete syncs on your idevice, showing “syncing” at the bottom of incomplete albums, when ANY album happens to contain a photo where you have selected a face to be the KEY PHOTO under the PEOPLE you favorited in your Mac Photo Library. You have to reset the faces on your Mac and let Photos rebuild the faces before you name the faces again, but you can NEVER pick your own KEY PHOTO (unless it is from an album you won’t be syncing).
• Which means, the fix is to create an “dummy” album you will never sync to your device, which contain photos you intend to use as key photos for the faces you have identified. Of course, you don’t even need to do this step if you don’t ever pick your own key photos. (Just to be safe, I made sure the photos in this dummy album aren’t links to the same photo from another album you will sync. I actually created a duplicate of photos I wish to use as key photos using screen capture and importing them into the library)

With the above, all my sync problems have now gone away.

There might be other things I’ve done in the past that could have rendered my success unique and non-replicable (such has having repaired and manually rebuilt the whole Photo library on my Mac from scratch a few updates ago), but I doubt it. Nogee43, please try and see if you have selected any key photos for people you have identified, and these photos are also in the incomplete albums you’re trying to sync.

Which brings me to (if the above is proven correct) the last problem of incomplete syncs should be an iOS problem, specifically with the key photos under People potentially conflicting between those from OSX and iOS.

Apple (or God), if you’re reading this, please look into it.

I am having the same issue on both of my iOS devices - iPad Pro & iPhone 11 Pro - I originally had 20,000 photos on my iPad Pro that were all removed after my first Catalina 10.15 sync via Finder on my iMac 5K and I attempted to sync a photo album to my iPhone 11 Pro and it wouldn't work and in fact by the end of the sync the "checked" album was "unchecked."  All the albums were inside Folders so I'm assuming that is the culprit. I tried the same with my iPad Pro and same exact problem. A sync test after moving one of the photo albums out from a Folder and directly placing it under “My Albums” has worked for me as a temporary fix on the iPad Pro.  But it’s SLOW - a basic backup and sync with nothing new on iPad, just a few minutes after the last backup and sync is taking 45 minutes. I have 32GB of ram on this iMac 5K - so that should not be an issue.

Yes thats what i meant, Albums directly under the "root" node or Directly under "My Albums" can be synced. And Albums which are inside a "Folder" Structure below "My Albums" will not be synced. If this is not working for you then there are more problems I suggest Flushing out your photo sync on your iOS device (ie unsyncing all your photos) then try to sync a few small albums directly under the "My Albums" try moving an album from one of your folders so they are directly under "My Albums" and try the sync again

Yup, same problem for me. Definitely not an issue with the photos themselves--e.g. I couldn't sync my "memes" album that was inside my "iPhone photos" folder, but when I created a top-level "*memes" smart album (set to: "All photos from the other 'memes' album"), that smart album syncs just fine.

The only way I have been able to sync (I also have sub folders) is to uncheck photos and remove them. Delete the iPhone photo cache folder from the folder you’re syncing from on the Mac, and then research sync photos. It takes a while I have 12,000+), but it works.

the down side is that you have to do this every time you sing, and you have to do with with each device, even if they are syncing from the same folder.

It’s been about 6 months. For a company that is so excited about their camera opportunities, they aren’t thinking about the whole picture.

As I’ve said, unacceptable.

Here is a temporary workaround which is far from perfect but is working for me.

• Create a new folder on your desktop and name it whatever you like. I named mine Temp Photo.
• Open Photos app on computer.
• Drag each folder you want synced from My Albums to the folder you created on your desktop. This duplicates all those photos so make sure you have enough space.
• Move that folder wherever you like.
• Connect phone and go to Photos tab.
• Uncheck 'Sync photos to your device from' and select Remove, then Apply. Once that sync finished, I power cycled my computer and phone. That may be unnecessary, but it's what I did.
• Back in the photos tab, check the 'Sync photos to your device from' box and select the folder you created.
• Make sure Sync 'all folders' is selected and Apply.

That got all my photos back on my phone while I wait for a fix.

The next problem is when I try to send any of those photos from my phone, it crashes back to the home screen.

The fix I found for that is I open the photo I want to send in Snapseed (I'm sure any photo editing app will do) and export it to my camera roll, then send it from there.

Like I said, it's a far from perfect workaround but better than nothing. I hope this helps someone.

As already mentioned in one of my previous posts: I have been on the phone on several occasions for several hours with a support engineer to explain what the issue is and try several things. Log files were collected.

Today I received a call from the engineer again. He explained that the problem is formally accepted as an issue which needs to be solved by an update of the operating system and that the developers are working on it.

The only thing which seems to work properly at this moment is to NOT synchronize from the Photo library but directly from folders on the hard drive.

For anything else we need to wait for the issue to be fixed by an update of Catalina.

I understand everyone is annoyed by this but let’s stop cluttering this discussion with negative comments as we all know them by now and they only fill people’s email. Constructive feedback appreciated.