Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

That’s certainly going to make a mess of Photos. I have tons of subfolders inside major categories. This is a horrible workaround even if it does work. I also see there is a 10.15.3 OS update overnight. Has anyone installed and tried this?

I am reading this forum for some time now, because I had this problem with syncing my photo’s.

After 58  pages, and still no solution, II tried something else:

Back to iTunes, but now in Windows (W10 via Parallels)

I installed iTunes, made sure my music would not be deleted and tried to connect to Photo’s

That didn’t work of course, the new photos library was not recognized.

So back to OSX. And to my surprise al my albums (My Albums) are visible in finder on my iPhone.

It is not working as it should be yet , but I can select all mij albums, if they are not in maps.

I admit, I am not an expert on OSX, so maybe someone else should try this option and explain what happens.

Oh, and before doing al this, I made my photos library the systemlibrary.

I have just checked for update and found no new version.. I am running latest version and it does not sync photos correctly via iCloud or using finder I am sorry to say. No solution to the issue yet.

Well as expected, Apple deleted my post explaining that I was going to report them to the ACCC over this incident almost instantly after I posted it, but I'm guessing there's more chance it was an algorithm triggered rather than a conspiracy theory that somebody from Apple actually even reads these threads, let alone reading every one and deleting them instantly if they disapprove.

Anyway, official complaint has been lodged with the ACCC, so this will be interesting to see what they have to say about the matter, and also just how quickly this post gets deleted...

over the past few days I have added a large number of photos from my iPhone to my photos system’

All these photos have synced via iCloud to my iPad, my iMac and my iPhone. I use iCloud and they are all in my photos library on iCloud.

All good so far!

The problem arises when I put these photos into albums...either new or existing ones. I use my iMac to do this then sort the albums alphabetically. Many of my albums are in folders

it is now the system does NOT work. The new albums or those I have edited are no longer in alphabetical order on my phone, my iPad or in iCloud....I have to physically put them in alphabetical order on my iPhone and iPad...but have no idea how to do that on iCloud so my albums on iCloud are a dogs breakfast and NOT in alphabetical order as on my iMac and as I want to have them.

Photos are on all my devices but not displayed as I want and as they did UNTIL CATALINA UPDATE....

Is. Wasting so much time manually doing what used to happen seamlessly with Mojave.

Surely it can’t be too hard for the software engineers to produce a patch/update to get this working again....

Hey everyone,

I haven’t found a solution but I am getting replies from Apple to gather files and system info etc. and to recreate the problem for them, I guess it’s a positive and creating some ‘noise’ with them.

I did forward the conversations on here to 9to5Mac and other outlets to try and get some coverage, I have no contacts whatsoever with these but in hope someone sees this to start the ball rolling as coverage. I read a post not long ago and someone was getting really, really annoyed, we’re all in the same boat and I hope something happens soon. It’s disappointing when you pay £2,000 on a MacBook or £1,000 on an iPhone and the two can’t talk to each other, especially photos, memories with friends, family and loved ones.

However, I can confirm I have paid £2.99 for a 200GB plan and all my photos have synced ok from the cloud between all my devices, no duplicates and in the correct albums created in photos and there is now no problem so I am almost certain there’s a massive sync issue with photos and finder and that either we’re being persuaded into using iCloud photos or we will have to wait until October when a new version of MacOS is released and iOS 14.

@DJB23

hu and thanks for your post. Just as an information: Apple has collected my data as well approx a year ago. I am not positive that they are working on it now nor will have a solution with IOS14. I have the issue since IOS12.xx. and apple promised to me that ..“with IOS13 it will work as before...“. The issue is ignored completely.

Sorry for having no better news and I hope that I am wrong...

AIRDROP INITIATION WORK AROUND TO ALLOW USB SYNC

Hi all,

Like most of you I've had similar problems getting my phone to sync with my photos folders on my mac book. After several hours of tinkering around, I was finally successful at getting a few folders to sync.

This workaround may work for some as well - I have the function in photos app on my mac turned on so when space is low, the higher quality photo is uploaded to the cloud. It seems like the finder version of sync currently was not allowing enough time to transfer photos and I was trying to understand if it just couldn't get the photos locally or from the cloud for some reason. Example - I have an album of 800 some photos, yet only 40 will transfer/sync to my phone.

With my phone attached to my mac book via usb cable, I selected one of the albums I've had problems with in photos mac book app and choose to share the album via airdrop, but did NOT complete the airdrop. I simply started the process but never selected a device.

Starting the process requires the app to package photos on the computer with any in the cloud - so 800 some photos to download in preparation to airdrop. Once they had downloaded, I left the selection screen where you would choose the device your going to send photos to, never choosing a device and just leaving the screen open.

I went back into finder and ran a sync on that same photos folder I had setup and left open as an airdrop in photos. - and boom after a few minutes all the photos synced back on to my phone through finder via USB. I went back into photos app and cancelled the airdrop that was left open waiting for me to select a device to transfer to - never actually using airdrop.

I've now repeated the process over several folders I could not get to sync previously and it appears this is working - at least for my situation. Hopefully others will have luck with this method.

Mike

Yeah, shocking, just this problem and thought eh, cripes whats going on? Crackers or what....basic flipping syncing of photos, which has worked perfectly for years, now screwed up. I have no clue whats going on between my Mac Pro and Iphone SE. Come new laptop and phone time, which isnt far off, I will be seriously reconsidering my options.

I can't even get that far. I have a Photos Library of about 55,000 photos, so I keep it on an external drive. Catalina sync with Finder can't find my Photos Library -- it shows no albums to select. The first time I tried syncing it gave me an error saying it could not find the library. This seems related to the OP's question, but is anyone else having the issue syncing libraries on external drives?

A MIRACLE occurred today and my photos are syncing and albums ar in alphabetical order s I have arranged them on my iMac.

For 6 months now I have had issues with photos syncing across my iMc, iphone, iPad using iCloud. My albums on icloud were a dogs breakfast and I had to manually order them on my iphpone and ipad.

Today, I tried a photo library repair. When this was finished, I checked icloud .com photos and lo and behold the albums were all back in alphabetical order. All photos in my library and folders are correct as well. This is reflected on my other devices.

I then added some new photos to one of my albums and this worked perfectly.

I still have issues when I connect my ipad to my computer and open photos. It does not recognise that the photos on my ipad are already in my library and it wants to import them all again...

For those having issues, I suggest you try repairing your photo library and see if it works for you.

Good luck

I am syncing with iCloud.

Photos has a repair library option via your computer. Hold option +command keys when you open the Photos app on your computer and it comes up with the option on your screen to repair library.

It may take a bit of time depending on size of your library

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.

I got it working, but I'm not exactly sure how. I was watching the Console for anything interesting leading up to the "could not find Photos Library" message. Again, I have my Photos library on an external drive. I started seeing some odd messages saying something like "volume unexpectedly disconnected" or "volume not ready" or something like that. So, I tried a sync again but this time while doing things that would keep a mounted volume active: randomly exploring folders or previewing files. Suddenly, the sync "took" and I started seeing pictures get moved over to my iPhone.

I haven't repeated this procedure, since this took hours I didn't have already. But this type of thing might point to a timeout when looking for the file or waiting for a volume to respond or to an issue with volumes going inactive (i.e. drive sleep).

I waited several months before finally upgrading to Catalina and finally did it last week. I had hoped that all of the little bugs would be ironed out by now. I think most of them are but I'm guessing this one isn't a priority because the reports go back to last year and it's still not fixed.

I have all of my photos in 'Photos' now going back as far as 2004 and have spent time to organise albums and create and organise folders. I sync my pics for the last 12-months to my iPhone as well as some other key folders but now I can't sync loads of them back to my phone and that's really frustrating.

@Apple when do you plan to fix this bug?