iPhone XS photos: album says syncing at bottom of screen but never stops and photos are missing.

Hello HF_NYC.

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.

If I'm understanding correctly, you are having some trouble with syncing all of your photos between the iPhone and Mac. I will be glad to assist.

Let's isolate this by trying safe mode:

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac

If the issue persists, use a test user account:

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

Let us know how it goes.

Cheers.

I have the same problem. I thought it got fixed but tonight I did a sync and the computer window screen that comes up when I click on my iPhone on the left under "Locations" shows everything is finished, but in Photos on my phone it says "Syncing..." at the bottom of every folder. And I see the photos shuffling around.

I sync a lot of photos from the Photos app on my Mac Pro (2013) to my iPhone 11 and, this is just a guess, but it seems to be syncing everything each time. I only added a few photos to some folders on Photos on the computer so the sync should be quick. Instead it looks like it's syncing everything all over. And it seems to continue long after the computer says it's done (meaning the little circular pie next to the iPhone name under Locations goes away and the backup date and time updates). So the computer is telling me I'm all done backing up and syncing but the phone doesn't seem to be finished with the photos.

Apple has a serious problem with photo syncing on the new Catalina and/or iOS 13.3.1. Serious issues. It's been going on for months.

Here is another thread I posted a while back. Similar issue. Apple, please fix this already!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250969742

Update: I lost my patience today and did the following:

• Sync'd all photos to Photos that hadn't yet been sync'd for safe keeping
• Deleted all photos from the 'Recent' album on my iPhone
• Deleted all photos from the Photos -> All Photos album on my iPhone

...but here's the issue...now I've done that if I go into the Photos -> All Photos album on my iPhone then all my sync'd photos from Photos are *still* there AND it's not possible to delete them. There is no delete option. There are also hundreds of other photos/videos in other albums, all of which cannot be deleted. In short, it's obvious the phone has got itself into a complete mess. Grrrrr....

Further update:

• I spent a few hours rebuilding the phone from scratch. Wiped the device, did NOT reinstall from backup and basically did a completely clean install of all my apps
• tried syncing photos again and got the EXACT same problem....first the duplicates started appearing in the sync process (after a couple of syncs) and then I tried to remove all synced photos and once again I was left with thousands of photos on the iPhone I cannot delete or ‘unsync’

This is ridiculous. The main reason I use apple products is my huge photo library and managing it / syncing it and I can’t spend hours rebuilding my phone every week. I’m going to call support.

I have now managed to delete the 'undeletable' photos, but only by purchasing 3rd party software (https://drfone.wondershare.com/) that deletes photos at a low level. Given this issue of not being able to complete a sync, which then later leads to duplicates, is happening on both my iPhone and iPad, and has happened both when syncing via iTunes and Finder, my hypothesis is that this is an issue with my Photo library.

I therefore performed the following steps:

1. Deleted ALL the photos from my phone using dr.fone, including the 'undeletable' photos
2. Purchased PowerPhotos (https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/) and used it to identify/remove all duplicate photos from my library in case that was confusing things
3. Ran a repair of my Photos library by launching with command+option keys pressed down
4. Ran CleanMyMacX to delete any photo caches created during previous sync efforts
5. Tried syncing with my iPhone again

Guess what? The sync said it was completed on Finder, but still had the 'Syncing...' black bar on the phone and only copied c.50% of the photos it should have done.

Convinced now this has to be an issue with either my Photo library or the sync process.

Update on my case:

• Have had I think three x 1 hour calls with Apple support. They've been very thorough and repsonive
• It's been escalated to the dev team for Photos who as yet have no idea what the issue is, but they agree there is an issue
• Most recent step involved me installing specific profiles on both my iPhone and Mac which took extra logs (1GB+!) which have been sent to the dev team for further investigation
• My issue is not related to iTunes vs Finder, not iDevice specific and not Photos album specific. Right now it looks like something has gone wrong in the Photos library. Should have more from the dev team after Chinese New Year.
• If I get a solution I'll post it here with the case reference so others can call Apple Support and leverage the investigation.

iTunes and Photos just are not able to properly Sync images....and the bad news is....Apple just don't care about. Sometimes pictures are missing, sometimes you ave duplicates of plenty of pictures, like in the example of my iPad Pro 12.8":

I have the same issue with a album on my iPhone 11 pro max. Synced folder of photos to my iPhone but 9 of the 13 photos are there and says syncing.... Syncing with iTunes has completed however. On version 12.10.3.1 itunes.

I’ve been having this problem for over a year maybe now and it’s continued now the sync is done via Finder, not iTunes.

I have wondered if it’s linked to me having an iPhoto library that was merged into Aperture and then those two libraries merged into Photos....but now not sure it is as even new photos are syncing partially/sporadically. Very frustrating!

Yous case is not an isolated one.

I have the exact same issue on both my iPhone and my iPad.

I am not using any iCloud functionality for photos except for the share albums option.

I normally:

1). Import and delete all photos from my devices into Photos on my Mac.

2). Sync them back to my device using the Finder

This all worked fine until recently, when it started showing the "Syncing..." message at the bottom of the screen and either missing photos or duplicating them...

iTunes is gone. I assume this is the reason for my problem. Previously, I synced an Album with my iPhone through iTunes. This album is specific with certain family photos I like to carry like one used to in their wallets. Since I have upgraded to the latest MacOS, (Version:10.15.2 (19C57) and Latest iOS Version:13.3), my personal photo album has disappeared from my iPhone. I do not use iCloud for Photos. I assume I can no longer have a synced photo album on my iPhone unless I use iCloud with photos. I have not done anything to try and fix this problem. I am sure it will aggravate me to no end once I attempt to get to the bottom of this problem.

iPhone X

MacBook Pro (Retina 15-inch, 2016)

Sorry, too late to edit the previous post.

Well, I just tried to fix the problem. It was actually easy for me. I just went to the new syncing screen for my iPhone in the finder and selected the album to sync. I assume the upgrade of OS's forced me to redo setting up the sync. No problems. Just click on the device in the finder window side bar and the rest is very clear, and works very well. I applaud Apple with this new way of syncing outside of iTunes. Five stars!

Same issue here. My Mac says syncing is complete however, not all of the photos are on my iPhone. I will leave my iPhone connected to my Mac for hours with no progression on the number of photos on my iPhone. Not to mention the fact that when I do disconnect my iPhone from my Mac, my iPhone still says its syncing, 24 hours a day, 7 days week.