Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

I updated to iOS 13.4 and it APPEARS that it FIXED the duplicate issue! I have not applied MacOS update yet, so I think the fix involved is associated with the iOS software.

Now... I had previously been using a single dynamic folder at the top Photos level (as in "not in a folder") to trick it to sync 5 years of photos, so I have not tested going back to being able to using the Photos Sync tab to select which folders I wanted.

Anyone else see 1) duplication fixed? 2) folder level sync fixed?

REVISED: Severely disappointed. It looked like everything was fixed... then it kept on 'Restoring' and has gone back to duplication city. DID NOT WORK. I'll update if anything changes once MacOS update is applied.

I'm in the process of my first sync post update of both iOS and Catalina. Somethings have definitely been updated, because opening Photos for the first time post update resulted in a short "updating" process screen. And then the messaging during the sync process is different... but still waiting. I have 40,000 photos, so it is taking a long time for what appears to be a full redo to take place

Hi everyone,

1/ duplication not fixed.

2/ sub folders is now synching !

Another thing : when I synchronize, the system erase all pictures in my iPad and then resync...

If I add a single album with some pictures, it resync all pictures... it's boring 😕

And some pictures are not sync, I don't know why...

Hi Crisu

is it working for albums within folders and have they stopped the multiple copy and paste issue when you place photos imported into different folders so it doesn’t copy everything over and over once you have pasted.

I have the update and will do it tomorrow, interesting how one of the biggest glitches isn’t mentioned as a fix unless I missed it!

Ok.... my latest update after upgrading BOTH iOS and MacOS today. It looks like sync is now observing albums and folders correctly, as well as the "In the past" X amount of time.

Duplication has been reduced by about 80% but still a prevalent issue. There is some commonality with duplication in photos outside of home timezone and related to having location information. For example, a group of photos taken on iPhone X in different timezone created duplicates on the Phone (i.e. only 1 original images exists in Photos) having the same time stamp, but one version with location information stripped off. Unfortunately the bug is sporadic, as most of the photos from the same iPhone do NOT create duplicates without the location (per today's update).

Overall a major improvement, but still disappointing to have a bug like this remaining from APPLE after it used to work flawlessly and obviously has been worked on recently.

Unfortunately the issue is not yet fixed with iCloud syncing. Upgraded Mac and both iPhone and iPad to latest software versions iOS 13.4 and 10.15.4.

still does not recognise already imported photos on both my phone and iPad when I connect to Mac photos...it wants to import a major number of my 17000 photos as new when they have already been imported to my photos library.

The other issue relates to sorting albums alphabetically. Once sorted on my iMac this is not reflected on phone, pad or iCloud.

The only way I can get this to sync across all devices is to repair my photos library...a pain to say the least.

So many phone calls, so many logs sent to software engineers and still they have not fixed the Catalina problem.

Extremrly disappointed!

I've done some rudimentary tests. I re-booted the Mac and iPad after the upgrade. I found that it's best to toggle off Photo syncing and respond to "Remove" photos. Then turn syncing back on. The upgrades solve the syncing of albums within folders. However: (1) sometimes I found that then entire album does not sync ( a photo in the middle of the Mac album did not sync) and (2) Some incomplete syncing is noted at the bottom of the "sync'd" album on the device with "Syncing..." message at the bottom of the album, incomplete. This last problem also occurred when High Sierra came out.

Still not perfect.

Question to all the people telling that the problem is solved now: does your iOS device show folders with your albums inside, or does it "flatten" the whole folder structure and show all albums on root, like it is on my device?

Markus

Mine works ok but not perfectly. Some pictures which i have organized in Albums that were taken from my phone to archive on my laptop do not sync back to the phone!!

What i mean by this:

Album 1 (Pictures taken with my Canon) - Syncs perfectly

Album 2 (Pictures taken with my Canon) - Syncs perfectly

Album 3 (Pictures taken with my iphone manually stored on my mac) - doesnt sync neither with my iPad nor with my iPhone.

Album 4 (pictures taken with my Canon) - Syncs perfectly

Anyone else having this issue?

Updated OS to 10.15.4 and iOS to 13.4 after seeing all the positive comments. My initial trial shows that it is syncing albums and nested folders but there are a few issues.

1 - Photos app on my iMac lists 6587 photos and 85 videos. After syncing I see my phone only lists 6468 photos and 70 videos. Identifying what's missing is going to be a challenge. My phone actually should have a few additional photos from what hasn't been transferred off the device camera roll.

2 - The Places album on the iMac still fails to identify any/limited sites (1) but the Places album on my phone (sync'd from iMac) show 3762 locations.

3 - The People album on the iMac shows 41 people but the phone shows 47 with 3 that have multiple duplicates. Also on the phone some individual People albums (16) contain no photos.

It's better but I'd hardly call it fixed. I'll need to investigate further.

I updated my iPad Pro, iPhone 11 both to iOS 13.4 and iMac to 10.15.4 yesterday.

Synced both iOS devices today via cord to iMac.

Added 2 albums (nested in Folders in Photos on my iMac) the two different Albums that had just pics in them (no vids) synced just fine as far as I can tell - the quantity of pics match on Photos on iMac and also on both iOS devices. However, the albums that had a combo of pics and videos - 1 album is missing 3 vids, the other album is missing 3 pics - one album has 137 items, the other has over 850 items.

No duplicates as far as I can tell - but will test this again after I add more pics or vids to the albums which is when I was seeing odd random duplicates on my iPad since Catalina.

Never had any of these issues prior to Catalina - I know others have complained prior to Catalina, but that has not been my experience.

After a couple hours, my sync finally completed. I'm using a smart folder to pull all photos and synching just that. It appears to have worked. 90 count difference between mac and phone, but out of 40,000, I'm not arguing. First time it copied new photos in about half a year. Will be interested to see if it holds with next synch

Its so totally **** ... updated qt 5pm ... added a nested Folder 2020 with 5 subfolders... they were synced after one hour (images) and 2 tries.

Now moving all my folders I put out in autumn 2019 after this sync starte to get not longer able to handle back in there folder s 2013 ... 2019 ... well its 6 hour's later and I after multiple crashes I have NONE (ZERO) of the pictures. I watched the sync process transfering 40k of pictures but there is none..

Its ****, this is the worst experience I ever had with apple computers

@Edwin: Finder USB - I see that the Finder screen has changed after the update, while the sync is in progress, but nothing changed, as far as the sync goes. I even tried, putting the 4 albums, back into their original sub-folders, but that didn’t work either. Unless I’m overlooking something here, but I have been following the discussion here.