Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

Interesting question.

I don’t know that you can sync LR to your iPhone or iPad.

I have given up trying to sync, instead I decided to use LR to catalog & metadata my images and I use PhotoStation on my small Synology Server instead of Photos. Again, it does not solve the syncing problem but it sure does solve the aggravation problem.

Needless to say, I am more than disappointed in Apple (and myself for trusting the upgrade).

I updated to Catalina 15.3 and IOS 13.3.1 and still no luck. Looks as though we may have to wait until version 16 as fixing this issue is proving to be very difficult.

My own view is that Apple has forgotten that to sync to an iDevice each photo needs to be optimised for the particular device since there is not point in syncing a 20 Mpx file to an iPhone with a 2MPx screen - you are just using and unnecessary amount of space on the phone. The Photos App on the Mac will tell you the file size (clicking on the circles i) but the photos app on the iPhone does not show file size information even though it is transmitted along with the picture. However if you instal an app on the phone called Exif viewer this information. The Apple agent I spoke to did not know this.

This I think is the fundamental problem that Apple is debating with itself - whether to have identical files on Mac and iPhone/Pad or whether to have an optimised version on the iDevice.

As for Lightroom I use this program and like it very much - like many on this thread I use LR for editing and Photos for syncing with my iPad.

Light room come in two versions Classic and "Normal". Classic is the more sophisticated version that I mainly, use copies of the edited file are kept on my Mac's HD. The "normal" version which is more basic in my view, keeps copies in Adobe's cloud. They will then appear on your iPad after you install the LR app. All of this (plus Photoshop) comes as part of Adobe's monthly subscription. It all works fine, except that I prefer LR classic,

The main bug bear I have with Apple is that if they have told us that syncing would no longer work, this is the route I would take for future work and I would not have tried to sync via finder which succeeded in removing all my photos from my iPad. Thus leaving me, like many others on this thread, with umpteen hours of work putting them all back either via LR or "shared albums" in the Photos app which requires a subscription to Apple's cloud.

Hope this makes sense.

I've been doing the exact same thing: using LR Classic for everything, basically, and just exporting those photos I want on my iOS devices to Photos on my Mac. Then (prior to Catalina) I would sync thru iTunes to iPads, etc. Generally it worked pretty good.

I really didn't want to get involved in Adobe's LR CC version and did not realize you could sync from the Classic version. Will have to check this out.

Like I said up above, once I updated to 10.15.3 I was able to sync through Finder to my iPad, with iOS 13.3. I have no idea what changed from 15.2 to 15.3, if anything, but it did allow me to sync. I had never synced using the "from folder" option in Photos, which is what I did. When I used to be able to sync from Photos/Aperture, the photos would appear on my iPad in the same order as they were on disk - I mean there would be a "Main" album for the year and sub-albums for each folder within the year. Now, they just all come in under the year - no subfolders. But beggars can't be choosers.

I also have a laptop and had Catalina on it until I put Mojave on it. There are times when both computers, running the same version of the OS would behave differently.

And I know this sounds crazy, but I have had photos just plainly disappear from my iPad.

I always like to think that each new version of the OS brings improvements and enhancements, and I have been very fortunate that this is the first update that has really caused me problems. I think Apple should "perfect" one OS before they attempt to "improve" it.

Interesting what you said about the "shared" albums. Does using them enable you to get your photos on your iPad?

My 2015 iMac was having some slowness issues, and not wanting to purchase a new iMac, I decided to bring it to a local tech shop that I have used before (and trust).

Short story is I am replacing the HD with an SSD drive & when they do so a clean version of Mohave will be installed.

I’ll update this board again when I get the machine back, but I am confident that will solve the bulk of the syncing and speed issues. The techs at the shop tell me that the update from Mohave to Catalina leaves tons of system junk unaccounted for on the HD causing many issues, so we’ll see.

I still plan on moving forward with my Lightroom venture and of course all of my images are also on my synology server, so I have multiple ways of viewing & syncing.

Stay tuned...

Has anyone managed to solve this?

I had it working some months ago, but the synced albums from iMac had duplicates.

I de-synced the albums and now NONE of the albums sync via the Photos tab in Finder! Even those albums at the root level in iMac Photos will NOT sync!

This is extremely frustrating!

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...

I’ll remain cautiously optimistic. I’d update Catalina and that did not fix anything. Have yet to update phone. A fix to photos does not appear in the release notes. And while there are always many items not included in the summary disclosures, I’d be surprised that they would not call out a correction for an issue of this magnitude.

I just tried to sync photos again with latest iOS & Mac OS, but its still not working.

For me it seems that Photos in general is not working correctly with linked photos (stored e.g. on USB, SD or NAS).

E.g. when you try to use your photos library in Mac OS settings for screensaver, i can only see the photos that are also synced to my iphone.

> But this is only 5% of all my photos.

Maybe someone can confirm this behavoir.

It’s still not working. I made sure both my MacBookPro and my iphone we’re running g the latest OS and iOS, but all my subfolders do not come across. With the number of folders and categories I have, I cannot put them all at the root level. Oh, I’m so mad about all this. Terrible that Apple has not fixed this by now. I sold my Apple stock and I had quite a bit. I don’t know how else to punish them for this stupidity.

Mine is 10:15:2, well spotted, I thought it updated but it didn't, I'll do that now :). This means it must be the iOS 13.3.1 in the phone that is the one that does it!

I did get rid of my old "events from my Mac" 1st, more of an accident with the messed up failed sync attempts. But it does seem to help make sure you have a clean new Albums, folders & would you believe sub folders on the device! Otherwise I think it misses items that are stored there, it was different on my iPad. Checked the phone again to be sure & it really worked!

Hope this helps

I noticed something weird like that on the iPad sync, the only difference was that the old iPhotos events were still there. I also had more limited space, but I think the iPhotos events under 'from my mac', is the culprit. I'm getting rid of that now.

The iPhone wasn't working before but is now fine. On the phone I go iPhotos - albums at the bottom menu, then scroll to from my mac - then the blue see all & all there nothing missing.

Trying to think what else I changed to help those struggling, let me know if it does or doesn't work. I know how frustrating this is!

Ipad synced perfectly with iPhotos too,...that is after deleting the old iPhoto events with a manual limited sync. I noticed the numbers were off on the menu ions for the folders, it said I had 1 photo for example in the folder, but when I opened it they were all there.

Seems we are close, I hope something here helps.

Ipad just now synced perfectly with iPhotos too,...that is after deleting the old iPhoto events with a manual limited sync. I noticed the numbers were off on the menu ions for the folders, it said I had 1 photo for example in the folder, but when I opened it they were all there.

Seems we are close, I have both devices working syncing with my mac mini via the cable, I hope something here helps.

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 tried rebuilding my Photos library, option/command and launch the app, as one person on this list suggested as a possible fix. It took about half an hour to rebuild as I have a lot of photos and folders. After the rebuild was complete I tried syncing with my iphone and received exactly the same results as before, no folders from my Mac, well one folder or useless photos that are sitting at the root level in Photos.