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

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.

I'm having the same issue as the rest of you although I move all of my photos off my phone onto an external hard drive and sort them into folders (OCD I guess) then I sync my photos & videos from within iTunes - I have the Syncing message at the bottom of each of the folders with numerous items missing! I have been noticing it for a while but it is now becoming increasingly frustrating! Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

The sync system is completely f•cked up since it's no longer done using iTunes...

My iPhone now says it has 50.876 Photos (while my Mac "only" has 28.448 and 518 videos) and it sais it is still syncing even though it was disconnected after the sync finished... (And this is after doing a complete restore and only one or two syncs...).

NEVER had any issues before and I'm an all time Apple user...

APPLE, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE THIS ISSUE SERIOUS AND FIX IT ???

I’m having the exact same issue on iPhone 11 (iOS 13.3.1) while syncing from macOS Catalina .3 version:

Missing photos on iPhone after syncing, on the bottom of Photos on iPhone the message “syncing...” remains there all the time. I’m also missing photos in Photos Folders on iPhone, having issues with synchronising Faces from Mac etc.

I hope this gets fixed soon as it’s been buggy since September!

Yesterday I downloaded Software Version 13.4 hoping there would be a fix for this issue in it.

Once installed I connected my iPhone to my Mac to sync.

I received a window saying a piece of software had to be downloaded.

I clicked ok, it downloaded and installed it.

So I thought this must be it!

And so I synched.

When the sync was finished I went into photos on my iPhone, selected all photos, scrolled to the bottom of the screen and saw that my device now holds 36.743 photos and that is is still synching, whereas my Mac only holds 28.595 photos...

STILL NOT FIXED

And then came the macOS Catalina 10.15.4 update right after lunch!

Installed it, synched my iPhone again and noticed and liked the improved interface (status bar indicating what it's doing at the bottom of the window).

And then the status bar said "Synching (Step 5 of 6) - Reading Photos library" and I liked it even more, hoping this would fix it! ;)

Once the sync was finished (according to the finder window…), I gave it some more time before checking the iPhone, (leaving it connected to my Mac).

When I first checked the iPhone photos, the photo count was down to >27.000 photos and saying "Syncing...”. 

And a few minutes later 29.506 Photos and "Syncing…"

And this is what it’s still at.

Getting closer, but still not 100% nailed...

The update fixed the continuous syncing problem for me. My photo app no longer says its syncing 24/7. However, there's roughly 100 photos that won't sync from my Mac to my iPhone. It'd be nice if, during the syncing process, the system would throw the problem photos into a separate folder or something. We would then know which photos to troubleshoot. But, alas, it doesn't do that so I'm going to have to compare every photo on my Mac with the photos on my iPhone to determine which photos aren't syncing and why, which is roughly 5,000 photos and videos. Grrrrrr.

Update hasn't fixed my problem. Same photo count post sync...roughly 60% of what should have been sync'd. I'm trying to get confirmation from Apple as to whether they think this update included the fix to the case I raised, or not. I hope not as then it's clearly not worked!

I’m the same - iTunes on my laptop is on the latest version and I Installed the update available to my iPhone XS Max a couple of days ago but all of my photos & videos have not come over to my handset!!! This has been going on for months now - sort it out Apple I paid £1500 for my phone and do not expect to experience such issues!!! I am even thinking about jumping ship .... 😡

How can Apple get this so wrong! I'm syncing right now and it says that it's copying 4,542 photos, all of which are already on my phone! It's copying all photos every time. This is just plain stupid.

Not that I am aware of - still experiencing the same issue which has now been going on for months!!! Very poor support/ resolution from Apple on this bug - I’m also experiencing issues with calls not showing in my Recents unless I switch off and back on. I don’t expect to pay £1500 for a handset to have such issues - I’m at the stage now where I’m considering selling it and going back to Samsung which is something I never though I’d say!!!

I have exactly the same problem, and I think it's a bug within iTunes itself or iOS devices but there's no way to know when an update to fix this problem will come.... hopefully soon since it's really annoying

Glad this worked for you but it has been demonstrated already that the issue is not a function of album size. For example, during testing with Apple Support I was able to replicated the issue with an album of <20 photos. ...but definitely glad it's worked for you!

You are joking, this is a heavy and well known Apple-Only-Bug since iOS 12. You force paying (AppleCare) Apple Users to perform usless things, making them loose much time, instead of resolving this BUG! I feel very shameful about Apple, beeing a convinced Apple-Only user since 1988 (Macintosh SE, MacOS 6.7). But this is defintively too much. Since one year syncing Photos with iTunes form Mac to iOS Devices is simply a desaster....you are offending the memory of Steve Jobs with this very bad service.

It is really a shame how the Apple support does not support paying Apple User. This Photos with iTunes Syncing BUG is a well known Problem. But at Apple Care Support they still do so, like it is a User-Related Problem.