Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

Same issue here. Brand new MacBookPro 16" running Catalina 10.15.2 with a 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel i9 and 32 GB of RAM. Trying to sync my 4 month old iPhone XR with the Photos app and no dice.

(I am also having issues manually updating music from Music to this phone. Also having issues with my Thunderbolt Display from 2016 being recognized after the laptop goes to sleep.)

These issues seem to have been known for many people for many MONTHS now - come on Apple, I've just dropped the better part of FOUR GRAND on devices in the last few months and a monitor that is not yet four years old ! SHAME !

I was having the same problem, but now, the second sync is doing nothing. No additional photos are sync’d ever past the first sync unless I full remove the “iPod Photo Cache”. Previously, I was seeing duplicates and black squares.

So, Apple released a new beta developer update today for Catalina and also for iOS. I have downloaded both of these and installed and unfortunately, still does not sync the albums within folders! Via USB CABLE.

I got my hopes up initially as it a pretty big update and took about half an hour to install (Catalina update) ...

on a side note, whilst there have been “workarounds” posted , my workaround was to make smart albums use the rules “album name is “ and then make a smart album of the standard albums that don’t sync. I placed the letter Z In front of these albums so they sort to the bottom of the folder list under the my albums folder , which as you all know , means it will sync. Interestingly enough I synced about 45,000 photos and videos all up... and every photo and video syncs without issue no duplicates no black tiles. Two days later I sync’d again and for the first time ever the sync process did not remove all the photos and re-add them again. I think that problem occurs with standard albums and not smart albums?! Interesting and annoying behaviours ! I would love to Bill Apple for my time!!!

@Etienne241: Bei mir funktioniert es nun ohne Probleme. Screenshot 1: Ich habe bei "Optionen" nichts angeklickt, also "Fotos automatisch einbeziehen" nicht angeklickt. Das kann aber kaum entscheidend sein. Screenshot 2: In der Foto-App habe ich die Alben in den Ordnern dupliziert und rausgezogen unter "Meine Alben" (siehe Beispiel "Azoren"). Ich habe bei Fotos in den Einstellungen weder "iCloud-Fotos" noch "Mein Fotostream" angeklickt. Screenshot 3: Hier ist der Ort meiner Mediathek ersichtlich (Bilder --> Bibliothek iPhoto.photoslibrary, da ich die Bilder von iPhotos in Fotos kopiert habe).

Leider konnte ich die drei Screenshots nicht hinaufladen. Wie hast du das gemacht, Etienne?

I continued using iPhoto even when Apple discontinued it. But now in order to upgrade to Catalina (which I haven't done yet) it is telling me that iPhoto will not be compatible with Catalina. So I decided to try out Photos App before I upgrade to Catalina to see what it is like. iPhoto is much better when it comes to copying metadata (location) from one photo to another, a simple copy - paste location works just fine. I can no longer do this with the Photos App. What is worse is synching the photos to my iPhone. All my albums are placed in the My Albums folder, but the synching is not accurate. Duplicates are appearing while other photos are missing. And after reading some of the replies below, I am dreading upgrading to Catalina.

Appreciate any advice.

If you can still use iPhoto, which totally surprises me and you have not updated to Catalina, I would certainly wait. Before you do update, make sure that all the programs that you really use (other than Apple programs) have updated to 64Bit. If they haven't, they will not run and not all vendors are updating their programs.

I have also the same issue here since upgrading to Catalina (on iphone and ipad).

Can someone do me a favor and also try to use a album of photos in screensaver settings?

In my case nearly all albums appear empty - seems like osx in general is not able to handle photos stored outside the mediathek (on usb, nfs, afp,..).

thanks!

I'm a photographer and I need my photos to sync and be mobile. Upgrading to Catalina wiped them out on my mobile devices. I waited a few months to upgrade to Catalina as Apple is notorious for buggy OS updates. I didn't know I'd lose all my mobile photos. I contacted Apple support, got passed around to four people over about 15 minutes, none of them knew how to help and finally I got disconnected. I was patient and not rude, but not sure why I was disconnected and no follow up email or anything. iPhoto had serious issues with library upgrades, duplicated items, now Photos isn't working. After 30 years of Apple, including my business operations, I've had it. This is unforgivable. Is there any way of going back to something that works? Old iTunes or something?

Okay, thanks. Then the problem still exists for me.

I cannot sync any photo albums from my mac to my iPhone,

even if they are in an album with no sub-albums.

And I believe I am using all the tricks.

Dear Apple, problem not solved !

I removed 6 Smart Albums from inside a folder in Photos on my Mac Mini. Previously they did not sync to neither my iPad Pro nor my iPhone XR. After moving the albums to the root location, both sync routines worked as expected when these albums were selected in Mac Sync Settings.

All my devices are using the most current version of their OS.

Neal

I hope Apple is reading this and actually working on a fix. I sat on tech support got handed off to 4 different people who didn’t have a clue and then I got disconnected. I’m not moving all my folders back to the root level. I’m a photographer and have all my folders organized by different groups, clients, etc. I was dumb to have trusted Photos for this knowing Apples track record of destroying things that work.

Many of us, already have figured out a temporary fix to this, around 2 weeks ago. Scroll up and read my last message. 👆🏼 It’s really easy and only takes a few seconds to do. Follow the screen shots that @dervatii posted above. Just move the folders, you want synced, and drag them underneath ‘My Albums’. There’s still a few photos missing, but I at least got all my folders back synced to my iPhone. Apple is fully aware of the problem.

For those folk who suggest that simply having albums at the root level fixes everything, please let us know what happens when you then make a small change such as adding a photo to an album.

I expect it’s not really fixed. Instead, what the rest of us are seeing is a load of unwanted changes to albums which shouldn’t have been touched: inflation in number of photos in each album, random duplicates etc etc, not to mention the fact that subsequent syncs take far longer than they should due to failing to step over unchanged content.

CB

No doubt, and agreed. Temporary fix, for mild users like myself, who only sync 4 albums from my Photos App on my iMac, to my iPhone. Syncing that large amount of albums, would be a process and headache. The temp fix, is still glitchy as well. Apple should of had this fixed several weeks ago. like most of us agree here.