Many photos are black on iPad after syncing from Macbook

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Level 1

23 points

Many photos are black on iPad after syncing from Macbook

A few days ago I synced photos from a Photos library on my Macbook Pro to my iPad Pro and found that many pictures were black. The previous day I synced the same library to my iPhone without any issue. I have repeated syncing many times to the iPad, with similar incorrect results. While doing so I have found out a number of things, but it's not solved. It seems to be due to the size of the library (either number of photos or size in GB), but then it is strange that it did sync successfully to my iPhone.

My Macbook is an early 2015 model running MacOS Catalina 10.15.2 with a 256GB drive of which 66GB is free, and my iPad is a 12,9 inch 3rd generation with 256GB of which 162GB is free. My iPhone is an iPhone 11 with 256GB with 150GB free, running IOS 13.2.3. I have several Photos libraries, my system library is on my MacBook. Other libraries are on an external SSD, with 1TB of which 500GB is free. One of these libraries is my synchronization library and contains a selection of photos from the other libraries. When I sync I connect the external SSD and my iPad (or iPhone) to my MacBook, make the syncing library the system library, so it will appear in Finder and then start syncing. I have been doing this successfully for many years (with iTunes).

As mentioned above the issue seems to be related to size, because when I select a number of albums, it does sync correctly. The syncing library contain 20.097 photos and 515 videos in 35 albums (largest has just over 4000 photos) and has a size of 67,68GB on the SSD. That includes the iPod Photo Cache folder (6,65GB), which is inside the library and which is used to actually sync to the IOS device.

I have found that when I try to sync the entire library, a number of files inside the iPod Cache folder is indeed black, so the issue seems to originate from building the iPod Photo Cache folder. When I try to sync a limited number of albums in my library right after an unsuccessful sync of the full library, it will still sync a large number of photos black to my iPad, as it seems to use a selection of what is in the iPod Photo Cache folder already. Only when I delete that folder, thereby forcing the syncing process to rebuild it, it will sync a limited number of albums correctly. Currently I'm trying to find out at what number of photos/albums/GBs it goes wrong.

My questions:

Does anybody recognize this issue?
What could explain it?
Why does it work on the iPhone and not on the iPad?
Can I solve this myself or is it a bug that needs to be fixed by Apple?

iPad Pro, iOS 13

Posted on Dec 15, 2019 2:45 AM

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Answer 1

chris_g1

Community Specialist

Dec 18, 2019 8:12 AM in response to Thierry_68

Hello Thierry_68.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. I understand that when you sync your iPad to your external SSD that is connected to your MacBook Pro the photos appear black. This doesn’t happen when you sync your iPhone to the external SSD. I’m happy to help.

Are you able to sync the photos to your iPad from your MacBook Pro?

Let’s try the steps here: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support

Are you able to sync the photos to your iPad as expected? If not, please try the steps here: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support

Take care.

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Answer 2

Thierry_68 Author

Level 1

23 points

Dec 21, 2019 2:24 AM in response to chris_g1

Hello chris_g1,

Thanks for your reply. I will try the steps you mentioned.

Still, I would like to clarify my case a little bit. I have one photo library on my MacBook Pro, which is the system library normally. I use Photostream to have new photos added to it automatically. In addition to that I have several photo libraries, archives you could say, stored on an SSD. On the SSD there also a photo library I use to sync my iPhone and iPad with. It contains a selection of all my photo libraries and has a little over 20.000 photos and movies in around 30 albums. I have been using this ‘synchronisation’ photo library without any issue for over 3 years with iTunes.

It is only since I upgraded to Catalina, with syncing from Finder, I have run into these issues. Reading experiences from other users, I’m quite sure this is a Catalina issue and not a user/device issue.

Since my last post I continued trying to get better results. Yesterday evening I have reached the best possible result until now:

All albums but 6 have been synchronised to my iPad without any black photos
The number of photos in each album is almost correct, I have 3 albums each with one duplicate photo
Five of the albums I have excluded have photos of a particular person each; when I sync one these it leads to a huge amount of duplicates in the other albums, but not necessarily photos that have that person on it. I can correct this issue by excluding the album with one particular person and then one by one exclude the one with duplicates and include them again. Not doing it one by one leads to issues (duplicates still there and black photos).
The sixth album I have excluded always leads to having black photos, in that one and other albums too. I have identified the photos that appear black and I am able to sync these when I put one or a few of them in new photo library.

Based on the above I’m getting more and more convinced it is a (photo) database issue, that leads to data integrity issues.

Thanks

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Many photos are black on iPad after syncing from Macbook

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