Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

Got excited today when update to Catalina and iOS released. Had high hopes our issue might have been addressed in this update but sadly it does not appear to be a problem that Apple can fix or even wants to fix

After doing updates on iMac, iPhone and iPad Pro, I decided to test how the Photos app would perform. No change whatsoever! Still stuffing up my albums on iCloud. My solution once again was to repair my photoslibrary. This fixed the iCloud issue but did not sync with iPhone or iPad .

totally disappointed.

Just an Update to my previous post: (note: I use Photos for image editing)

Installed the recent Catalina Supplemental update, and then did some more Syncing (iMac to iPhone) with different combos of Folders and Albums.

Have all worked so far. Maybe I've been lucky (so far)!

I think my earlier theory that the Photos Library corrupts in Catalina and Repairing it only works for some Users is holding.

Previous Post:

(1) Have had major problems syncing images from iMac (2017) to iPhone 6, from Folders in Photos as well as other minor syncing probs. with Catalina. Solved for now (hopefully).

Tried the suggestions from MikeyBananas and, unlike many Users, had reasonable success.

That is, I did a Repair in Photos on the Library (took about 2 hour for 16,000 images just so you know. Seemed stuck on 74% Restoring but eventually reached 100% complete). Rebooted in Safe Mode, as per Mikey's suggestion (dunno why this would help), and then rebooted normally.

Synced a few Folders in my Photos Library to iPhone. Successful (first time Folders have synced for me).

Synced a few more Folders. Successful except a few Albums on my iPhone had a few missing images.

Manually selected ALL my Folders and other Albums in my Library and synced then to my iPhone. Total success. All images on my iPhone.

Obviously still not ideal (as multiple Syncs were needed), and may still fail on the next Sync.

(And I know the steps above don't work for everyone because of reasons in my original Post)

Much better syncing with the latest update to Catalina, not perfect but I have managed to synch my iPhone XR, iPad Pro & my wife’s iPad 6th generation. Date ordering of pictures is a little random as are duplicates but 7 out of 10 could do better. I have Mojave time machine back ups prior to the launch of Catalina on an external hdd just in case the next update cocks it all up again. iTunes seems to lose some albums or part albums, most odd.

Thanks for the detailed account rodm7.

As I mentioned previously, I have tried the Safe Boot then Repair Photos Library then restarted in Safe Boot then Restarted again as normal (have no idea why, that might help, but did it just in case).

The good news - since the 10.15.4 Catalina update Albums nested in Folders are syncing - which is great. The other good news - I have not yet seen any random duplicates on either of my iOS devices (iPad Pro and iPhone 11 Pro).

The bad news - in the few tests I've done so far, I have noticed missing images (just 3) in albums that are a combo of pics and vids. Nothing missing in albums that are all pics. And one album keep showing the same 3 images as solid black - even after un-scyning this album and syncing it again - not change - the exact same 3 jpegs are solid black on my iPad Pro. The good news is these exact same 3 pics appear just fine on my iPhone. However, my iPhone is also missing 3 videos in a different album that also has a combo of pics and vids. The albums that have only pics in them seem to be just fine on my iPhone - exact number count of images appears also in Photos on my iMac 5K.

Each sync on iPad Pro takes about 1 hour - and I'm not doing much - the albums being added are not that huge - ranging from 12, to 100 to 800 images.

My photos library is too large for iCloud and too large to put on my iOS devices. I store all my images in Photos Library on my iMac 5K.

Thanks heaps JNA2. Great detail.

Dunno if I need help anymore but if it all fails again I will follow your suggestions.

Apple needs to publicise this fix for all the users who haven't yet stumbled across it!

As of the new updates of Catalina iOS 13.4.1. It's crazy, the issue is even worst. My iPad Pro is being loaded the photos into triples time after I tried to plug my iPad into my iMac 2019. And it couldn't deleted the photo loaded into my iPad, while I tried to unpick the album in the iTunes to free up the spaces in iPad. Now I can't do my drawing in my iPad as of out of storage. Apple really drive me crazy as of the issue couldn't solved so far almost half of year.

I have sorted it at last. I took my photos library from a time machine back up before Catalina. I copied it to an old iMac (lucky to have one) running El Capitan and made it the new library for the empty photos app. Then I imported all the photos I had taken since last October. I have now recovered all the photos that the Catalina new Photos app migration lost.

It was a lengthy process as I have over 8000 photos and had to go through month by month back to 2002. I found 200+ really important and sentimental photos that Catalina had just lost.

I will now back up this new composite library and sync to my phone and iPad using iTunes in El Capitan. Then I am going to let Catalina convert this library again and then I will know just how many photos it fails on.

I suppose I am lucky that I have this spare machine to do this on, but it has still been a day's work to work around something that in their own words "it just works". Well heh! surprise! "it doesn't. Probably don't care as already had my money for several computers , phones, pads, watches.

Received an update to iMac OS 10.15.4 and the problem has been solved. I am able to sync my iPhone 8 and iPad and it takes the photos from my Photos Library, Favorites folder. I am glad I waited and did not try some of the more sophisticated suggestions. It seemed to me they might create more of a problem. If this hadn't worked I was prepared to stick with exporting my favorites to a separate file folder. Now I don't have to. Thanks Apple!

Hi JNA for thew detailed work around.

I sync with a folder not with the photos app. Unfortunatley resetting permissions and reinstalling Catalina did not work for me. I did a resetting of NVRAM and SMC already a year ago with the apple support.

I assume that there are multiple reasons for the problem as some users in this forum have different solutions. Most still have none. Anyway I appreciate all the efforts from everyone to find a way out.

Thanks JNA2 - I thought it was worth a try even though it sounded like you stored your pics outside of Photos initially and that might have been your issue and why repairing permissions would help your situation? I tried it anyway, along with a reinstall of Catalina and a repair of Photos Library... no change for me - while I can sync albums nested in folders, several albums are missing images when you compare the numbers count between Photos on iMac and the albums on my iPhone 11 Pro - have only done 1 sync after first removing all the pics to have a clean slate on iPhone. Have not yet tested the sync on iPad Pro. Usually second and third syncs for me is when I start to get random blank images on my iOS devices - and oddly enough NOT the same images are blank white on my iPhone as they are on my iPad Pro...

To anyone that has had initial success, did you continue to see success on your 2nd or 3rd syncs, etc... are you comparing your image count between your Mac and your iOS devices? at quick glance everything looks fine to me, but when you compare the image count I will see 825 pics, 3 videos when it should be 828 pics and 3 videos... etc... but some albums are perfect - at least after 1st sync.

At least for me the syncing albums nested in folders is now possible after the last update to Catalina 10.15.4 - but still getting blanks and missing images. Will update after more testing.

My original issue was that syncing selected photo albums via cable from my MacBook Pro to my iPhone stopped working ~6 months ago. As of OS 10.15.4, and iOS 13.4.1, this now works. I finally have my saved photo albums on my iPhone again. So my issue is solved, and I'll sign off this thread now. Thanks for all the commiserating !

gvd1, sorry the procedure didn't work for you. I had issues for the past few years with links getting lost to referenced pics outside of Photos. This was probably a permissions issue that was ongoing. But under Mohave I was able to sync, and usually just restarting Photos temporarily fixed the broken links. I just lived with it as regular Permissions repair didn't address the problem.

Worked with Apple support earlier in the year and focus was first trying to fix the links issue before tackling the Catalina syncing challenges. After about six weeks of getting no answer on how to solve the missing links, I decided to migrate everything into the Photos library. Broken links no longer an issue but still couldn't sync individual albums. Then contacted by Apple re trying the new procedure. Realized that it is a fix that addresses a specific set of issues and probably only a few configurations. Unfortunately will not work for everyone.

I did experience discrepancies between my pic count in Photos and what I got on the iPad, even after the fix I outlined. Worked out to 85 out of 14k pics. For around 80% of these, just making one edit in Photos to the pic seems to have reset the last modified date and allowed the pics to sync correctly. For the 20% that this didn't work for, I just removed them from the albums. May try reimporting them at some point. Did also see a few blank images that kept reappearing. No fix for these so just deleted them from Photos.

Once I did this clean-up I have had consistent syncing over the past week between Photos and the iPad. However, I am not trying to upload pics to an iPhone and I have never had a random mix of pics not syncing or more than a few blank images.

Thanks JNA2 for your follow up - how did you figure out which images were missing from your iOS devices - I know what you mean about doing a minor touch up which will then “reset it” or refresh it somehow so now it syncs... but I’m not sure how to figure out what is missing in albums that have hundreds of images. Besides fixing or deleting your missing images, have you gotten any duplicates or blanks? Like seeing a solid white or solid black square on your iOS devices in place of a pic or video?

gvd1, Unfortunately I can’t offer a short-cut to figure out which images are missing on your iOS device. I’ve done this twice and both times it was via the brute-force method. Never figured out a way to automate it.

I have over 100 albums that range from 10-15 to 500+ pics in each. The first time I did this was four years ago and it entailed fixing/deleting a few hundred images. This time it was easier.

My approach is to make sure the sorting of the pics is identical in Photos and the iPad. I then write down the name of every album along with the number of pics in Photos and the corresponding number on the iPad. That identifies which albums don’t agree between the two.

The iPad is beside the iMac and I then scroll through each album comparing between the two. When I find a missing one on the iPad I do an edit in Photos and write down which ones I’ve tweaked. Once it is all done I do a re-sync and go through the process again to confirm if it worked. Very, very tedious, but it does identify the problem pics and which ones can’t be fixed by a minor image edit.

Yup, it takes hours to do this. And it isn’t really feasible unless the sort order in both devices is identical.

I have seen a few blanks and possible a couple of duplicates on the iPad. These usually correspond to pics that there are problems with in Photos. In some cases when I double-click on the problem pic in Photos another image launches into the edit mode. These ones I just delete from Photos. Never figured out a way to recover ones with this type of corruption.

This approach cleans things up but you will lose some images. Hope this helps.

I'm having the same problem reported by so many others trying to sync an iPhone XR on iOS 13.3.1, but am already on Catalina 10.15.4. What is the correct method to sync photos from an iPhone XR to a MacBook Pro when both are on the latest system versions? Thanks.