Mac Os Catalina do not sync photos with iOS Devices

@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.

I see that Apple has marked this thread as "Solved". No, it is not solved yet!

Yes, after the upgrade of both iOS and MacOS, the photos started syncing again.

However:

1. the random "black blank squares" are still appearing in many albums on the iPhone. When you tap into this black squares, there is a no photo but just the geo-tagged photo location displayed at the top. Adjacent to it is the actual photo but without the geo-tagged location.
2. On the iPhone, many albums are still showing "Sycning..." at the bottom even though sync has finished more than 12 hours ago.
3. Some old People names whom I do not want to see and deleted in MacOS Photos are still showing up in iOS.

It is really buggy. Please help to really fix it!

I think it does matter - if someone just started searching for this issue they might find that the issue has been “solved” since that is how it’s marked. And if an Apple support person unfamiliar with this issue is trying to search for it while on the phone with a customer having this problem, they might be misguided to see find that is has been marked as solved. When we all know it is not solved.

We want able to be sure to understand that for most of us it’s not solved, even though it has improved with the latest updates - syncing Albums nested in Folders is solved, but not without a suite of issues like random duplicates, missing images, blank white or black images....

We need Apple to understand this issue is NOT solved - how the thread is marked might be an issue. It could be misleading and at best, it adds confusion.

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)

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.

D6v1d,

To answer your question about corrupt photo files, here is my experience with two types of what I call file corruption:

a) I had photos that 1) would not sync, and 2) photos that sync’d as duplicates to my iDevices.  In order to fix this problem, I deleted those from my Photos library and re-imported them from my external hard drive where I keep backups of all my files (jpg and raw).  A re-sync eliminated the problem for those that were duplicates and those that would not sync. 

b) I had another subset of photos that would not sync.  But first, a little background….  I use Luminar 4 as an external editor for my RAW files.  I have it set up to be called via the extensions menu in Apple photos.  When I’ve completed editing in Luminar 4 and I save changes, it sends a new jpeg back to Apple photos along with all the RAW file edit commands to be stored with the RAW file and new jpeg thumbnail in the Photos library (see reference article below). Prior to the SUPPLEMENTAL update to MacOS 15.4, Photos would not recognize these new jpegs so they did not sync. After updating MacOS with the SUPPLEMENTAL update (released by Apple on April 8th), all new edits were recognized and would sync to my iDevices but not any of my previous Luminar edits.    I ended up having to go into Luminar and re-edit for each photo and have it send back a new jpeg to Photos.  For some reason, repair/rebuild of the Photos library does not fix this, only a re-edit in luminar would force Apple Photos to recognize the new jpeg.

Prior to updating PadOS /iOS to 13.4.1, there were lots of missing folders and missing pics after a sync.  But now after updating to 13.4.1 it works near flawlessly (see caveat below).  I noticed that for the first sync after updating the iOS, the photos folders on my iDevices were completely removed so the first sync was essentially a fresh start.  And it works.  All my selected folders sync over - 14,300 photos in 210 folders.  The only thing I’ve noticed is that there is this message “syncing…” at the bottom of approximately a dozen folders on my iDevices that doesn’t go away. Not sure why.  But, I can ignore that since ALL of my folders/photos that I’ve selected are syncing over.  I’m pretty happy with things now.  

Subsequent syncs?  No problem, no sync errors, no duplicates. Newly selected folders with photos all sync with success.  

Time duration?  It still takes the same amount of time to go through reading the photos database but copy time is dependent on how many additional photos are selected for sync.  I have about 50K pics in my Photos library so it takes a while to read through my database. 

In summary, you have to have installed the latest updates to MacOS and PadOS / iOS and delete / re-import any suspect photo files in your Photos library. Then it all works.

Here is a great article https://tidbits.com/2019/06/14/the-ins-and-outs-of-non-destructive-editing-in-photos-for-mac-and-ios/ written by Nik Bhatt on the inner workings of the Photos app.  Nik Bhatt is a former senior director of Engineering at Apple and led the Aperature and iPhoto engineering teams for several years.

Don’t hold your breath, the problems with photos & music have been since the release of Catalina, duplicate pictures, back ups hanging then not transferring to iPhone.

like many others I just live with the system as it is, periodically clearing out the dross.

What I have noticed after weeks of being completely abandoned by Apple with my problem, is, that images produced by other devices than my iOS Devices (iPhone X and iPad Pro 12.8”), this means images from cameras (Canon or Nikon), images from the internet, images produced with my software (renderings, or PDF’s transformed in JPG’s) or my studio’s server are Syncing. May be the problem is the picture format or the nested informations of iOS Camera Images....

The latest 2 updates seem to have solved the problems for me 😃.

I installed all updates (macOS, iOS and iPadOS), then repaired the library and synced - all photos and albums were synced to my iPad and iPhone. Then imported new photos, created a new album and synced again. Showed up perfectly well, all (old and new) photos are there 😃.

Directory structure has never worked. I don’t think it’s even suppose to on you iOS devices.

Correct. No current Apple Photo app "speaks" folder. All photos are stored in one large album called All Photos. You then use tags, albums or smart albums & metadata to organize them.

Most issues between the legacy iTunes syncing processes and iCloud syncing stem from this I would think. Most DAM/photo management apps have gone this way in recent years. Less reliance on location/folders and more on image metadata. This way one image can be tagged dozens of ways but only live in one folder on a storage medium. A single copy.

I updated my iMac and iPad Air 3 10 13.6 today. I repaired the Photos Library, used the "remove" photos options and performed a sync. Albums within folders sync'd. However, randomly, not all photos for albums sync'd successfully. Some albums did and some did not. Incomplete albums showed "Syncing..." at the bottom of the album. Successfully albums displayed the number of photos at the bottom of the album. I performed another sync by adding another album to the list of already selected albums. That album sync'd completely, others remained the same. Did not notice any duplicates as others have noted.

Syncing is still broken. I wish there was a credible 3rd party where this could be escalated and exposed to Apple enthusiasts. That might get Apple's attention.

I finally bit the bullet and bought 2TB iCloud subscription to get this over with. Now I am on Apple Support and the person helping me because now my 30,000 photos are all duplicated on iCloud. He has never heard of the finder sync issue. When he linked to my computer and saw my desktop I showed the 78,000 responses to this support community, but he clearly has not heard there way a sync problem.

MusicMat_AT,

I didn’t go for option 1 as I wanted to specify what photos to use for key photo.

So I went for option 2 instead.

To be extra carousel, I decided to create a screen-grabbed dummy album of all the faces I wanted to use as key photos, independent of rest of the “real” library. This album is not to be synced.

My specific steps were (on the Mac of course):

• screen grab all faces you want to use,
• create dummy album
• import theses screen-grabs into the dummy album
• wait hours for photos to scan, until it lets you name these grabbed faces in this dummy album. BUT DON’T LABEL THEM JUST YET
• Now go back to your people folder
• temporarily rename all the people there to an unused name (eg. Jack Black to JB, Jill White to JW...) ]ie you are basically removing their names]
• Go back to dummy album and name the grabbed faced to their real names (eg Jack Black, Jill White......)
• Go back to People album, and you should see doubles of everyone their: Jack Black, JB, Jill White, JW.....)
• Merge (drag and drop) JB to Jack Black, JW to Jill White, and so on.

You should now have a people album where the key photos are all from the newly imported grabs sourced from the dummy album, while the rest of the photos are from the real library.

try syncing

you should no longer experience incomplete albums on your device.

let me know if it works

Nogee43,

What you saw initially as incomplete but eventually got synced seems like the lengthier time it now takes to sync photos. It seems the idevice hasn’t had enough time to uncompress the transferred photos and structure.

I am speculating that before we all faces this problem, photos and album structure were actually synced in real time. Once the Mac says a sync is done, the sync is also done on the device (truly done).

With Catalina or iOS 13, it seems they were trying to shorten the transfer time of a sync by “packing” all the photos and album structure into a compressed file, transfer this compressed file to the idevice, and leave it to the idevice to unpack and arrange. But how ironic the result.

Thats why you will see at the bottom of the Mac’s finder, during a sync, the numbers of photos showing as successfully copied in a relatively constant and quick manner, but even when the sync is reported as completed and you unplug the sync cable, you will still see the number of photos continue to increase (albeit slowly) under “Photos” (“Photos”: lower left icon of the photo app, very bottom).

I am speculating here of course as only Apple or God knows the syncing logic.

Unfortunately, I have never gone into each syncing album and looked at the bottom to comment on whether I see a final number of synced photos or the word “syncing”. I always only examine the “total count” under “Photos” (lower left icon of the photo app, very bottom) and the album count from the top level.

It was when the “total count” under “Photos” was stuck at “Syncing” hours after a sync, and a few album counts (top level reading) were missing 1 or 2 photos, that tipped me off on a pattern of problematic photos.

I painstakingly compared the problematic albums between the idevice and the Mac photo library, and realized all the missing (still “syncing”) photos were those I had used as key photos

Updated my iPad Air 3 to 13.6.1. Toggled off Photos Sync, checked removed photos from my device, toggled Photo Sync back on and performed sync to my iMac.

My thoughts in prior posts concerning Key Photos in People and using Photos in Contacts have proven incorrect, as I can see some albums that follow my thoughts and others that do not. I'm at a loss.

This sync with the update, many of the albums that previously showed "Syncing..." completed successfully. I still have some albums displaying "Syncing..." and haven't researched.

At this point I give up. We're the ones that are trying to use the Apple previously working features to their fullest and doing the troubleshooting for them. I would expect this to have been solved completely before the release of Big Sur. What other issues will we face with that release?