Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

The right way is through the finder and then wait for Apple to come up with a solution to its sync problems. Until then, you will miss photos and some of the photos that do sync will look black on your device.

We have been waiting here for more than 7 months.

Thanks! A couple of questions:

1. How do I know I have corrupt photo files in my library? I did the Library rebuild many times and it seems to finish the process correctly.
2. What happens on further synchs, after adding some new pictures to the library? Does the sync takes long, synching again the complete library? Or is the process quite fast, as it used to be with iTunes before Catalina? No sync errors (duplicates and black boxes)?

Thanks for the feedback!

1) dont know

2 ) does not work ... added folder „Easter2029“ one week ago ... does not sync, does not even appear on the phone

So there is no correct way it simply does not work.

spent weeks on this since October

Just a quick Summary:

Please be aware that although various suggested fixes have worked for some of us, they do NOT work for everyone.

Many Users of Photos still have major problems.

So DO backup your photos often, ensuring that you don't lose or overwrite old backups (these may be the only non corrupt ones you have!), and don't trust any fixes even IF they appear to work at first. The Photos library can still corrupt again later.

Still waiting on Apple to say something!

Fair point rodm7.

I went to the extent of restoring both my iPhone and iPad to ensure a clean sync after deleting and rebuilding my Photos app library. All photos were painstakingly re-imported and organized in folders. This was done in an effort to avoid any possibility of corruption. Well that didn’t happens. I’m still not able to sync my Photos app library to my devices using finder without the previously mentioned duplicate and missing photos. To add to the frustration the location data seems to have disappeared. When I click on that library in the Photos app it only show one photo despite all the photo files having the geotags. This is a mess and far from being resolved.

Frustrating you went thru all that for not - but I appreciate you letting us know. I will add that in my recent tests, after rebuilding and repairing Photos overnight and the couple of sync tests - I noticed that one smart album showing many blanks that initially seemed random but upon close inspection noticed that all the blanks happen to be the “hearted” Favorites assigned images - but oddly enough only blank on iPad, while on iPhone all looks just fine - meaning that album has no blanks on iPhone - so not sure that corrupt images are the issue, if that helps anyone. I tried removing the Favorites assigned keyword restarting iMac and removing the synced images from the iPad then assigning the Favorites again and syncing them again - not change - still blanks on iPad. Another 2 albums are both perfect on both devices. While another album missing 3 pics on iOS devices and not sure why they count is different from the count in Photos. Can’t tell which pics are missing, the album has many images. I am finding syncing to be taking about 35 minutes which is faster than previously versions of Catalina.

I have taken a few months away from this waiting for Apple to provide a full solution. Nothing.

I have over 50 albums and thought today would experiment. I synced 4 albums to my iPad and noticed only 1 of them won't sync. Most of the pictures appear black on the iPad. I decided to try that album on my iPhone. That sync'd fine. SO i decided to restore my Ipad back to brand new - and then synced the photo album. Same issue.

I think this confuses me even more as an Apple rep was telling me my photos library must be corrupt but surely this proves this not to be the case?

Has anyone done the Photos library repair? Any difference?

I am going to ring Apple again and speak to a senior advisor. Photos were syncing correctly in my phone and just plugged it in and synced and loads have been removed from various folders so photo count is different across all albums on phone versus Mac photos!!! Copy and paste into new folders still doesn’t recognise once pasted on Mac photos so u end up doubling up. Modified photos come out as white no picture when syncing so not recognised on phone but yet showing on Mac photos!

What is wrong with these developers how can they get this so wrong, it wasn’t broken why didn’t they just leave it. Absolutely appalling from Apple.

I am now noting that my iPhone syncs fine.

However my iPad does not.

I am not sure if this is good or just bad as inconsistent. I have tried resetting the iPad and still some albums just have 80% blank (black) images. The exact same albums are fine on iPhone.

Oddly my iPhone XR loaded all pictures just fine using the latest updates on both my MacBook & XR. I loaded my iPad Pro from Mojave loaded on my spare MacBook just as a comparison, nothing to choose between them other than the changes to iTunes.

Thanks to all for testing,..,.but I have not tried any of the suggestions here waiting for at least several people to confirm whether any of them work. After the last update, we were able to to sync albums that were missing since Catalina and IOS 13, but the workaround we used to sync photos is no longer working: In order to avoid duplicates, we were deleting all photos first. This would take a couple of tries for complete photo removal. Then we would sync. It would take a while but it somehow worked. Now, I can’t remove all the photos. And when I sync to add new photos, theduplication of photos appear again, now with empty black boxes to signify a photo. However, when I look at the photos that were synced in the albums view it all appears without duplicates and without the black boxes.

It seems every one’s experience is slightly different but generally filled with bugs. Im hoping for a solution soon as this has seriously changed my mind about this expensive phone we purchase every several years.

I too have been reading everyone's experiences with different scenarios but all around the same theme. I'm still waiting on Apple to come up with the fix. I read where someone had some luck after the supplemental update of 10.5.4 and wanted to try it. I could not find the Supplemental update for my Late 2015 iMac as it said that I was up to date.(?). In their infinite wisdom, they did not notate the supplemental with a different release number. Poor software development! I'm a retired project manager of software development and Apple has shown that their development lifecycle process is in need of major improvements. Tim Cook said that this was going to improve after the Catalina fiasco. Let's hope so.

Thanks all.

i have my final call tomorrow with Apple after the senior member referee it to engineering for five days. I am not expecting it to suddenly work but also will be refusing to spend loads of time on it.

After 45 hours in a week looking at this, I don’t think they or anyone can consider it to be fair on us as consumers.

Angers me I will continue to use the products as I do find them great mostly but definitely lesson learnt, apple is not as great as should be

I hadn’t tried a sync to my phone for awhile and thought I would with recent updates so I selected the option to sync certain photos folders of pictures. It took forever to sync, I know not why and when it was done my phone had many, many folders of photos I never selected. OMG! What a mess. Can we please figure out how to bring back Steve Jobs and fix this mess?

Hi All,

Just updated to Catalina and I have the same problem. Some (Smart) Album have only some photos, other are complete. One album is missing. I tried to remove photos for the iPhone, restart the Mac, restart the iPhone, restart the washing machine....

No error, no output, nothing at all...

The only reason for this is that Photos is crap! Sync process is (that BTW was working great in the past) is crap!

Apple, you really need to go back to the basics!