Syncing between Mac and iPhone stuck at "Reading Photos library"

The problem is ( at least it was for me) with Referenced photos as pointed out by Eric Lane and others.

The last Mac OS update screwed up the syncing if the photos library has any referenced photos.

I had about 12K photos or older (referenced), a legacy of the switch over from Aperture to Photos (apparently).

I compiled the referenced pics using the create New Smart Album feature.

Then I had to go to old backups (I keep everything even old CDs with originals) and one by one erase and copy several older albums with missing photos.

It took a while, but got all the referenced photos out of the library.

Once the photos library detected 0 referenced photos the syncing proceeded with no more problems.

I am very disappointed that Apple Tech support did not flag the Referenced photos as the issue early on and wasted a lot of my time and others too.

The only positive thing about this is that now my library is complete and and I can edit older pics that before could not be edited because they were referenced. I also got to revisit some of these older pics bringing back older memories.

I had the same problem and for quite a while I could not figure out what caused the problem. After reading up on a lot of possible solutions and trying several of them I finally found a solution which solved the problem for me.

For me the problem was caused by photos which still appeared in my photos library but weren't referenced to an actual file on my iMac. Not sure how that can happen but that's another story.

To solve it:

1. Open photos on my iMac, went to the library and selected all the photos (edit ->select all)
2. choose the option consolidate (file -> consolidate)
3. When asked click on copy
4. The process will then tell you which photos it found in your library for which it can't find an actual file
5. Note down the file names
6. Use the smart album option to find the photos in question
7. Delete them from your library
8. Repeat the consolidate photos until no problems are reported by the process
9. Once you have deleted all the problem photos you can connect your iPhone, start the sync process and it should complete within a few minutes (depending on the size of your library)

If you don't want to delete the problem photos from your library then you'll have to figure out where the actual files are on your computer and link them again. For me the problem photos weren't important so I simply deleted them.

Hi,

I have been having the same issue since May:

• before that, my entire photo library was synced between my Mac and my iPhone
• I have approx. 45000 photos, many in Raw format, most of them referenced
• Apple was of no help in May when I contacted them (they proposed me to move manually all my photos from the current library to a new one, which would make me lose either my originals or all the modifications made to the photos ; or they suggested I activate iCloud, which would cost me the 2 To formula)

Thanks to this thread, I suspected that the referenced photos could play a role in the problem.

I bought a new SSD 2 To hard drive to make sure I had enough room to copy my entire library...

I consolidated all the referenced photos and videos (it took a lot of time).

At the end, I still had approx 500 photos that I was not able to consolidate; I exported them before deleting them.

Then I was able again to sync my photos from my Mac with both my iPad and my iPhone !

Of course, I cannot guarantee that the issue lied with the referenced photos; but it did the trick !

Best regards,

Nicolas

FIXED!!! You did it Steve!

What solved it was activating iCloud Photos. I know I said the phone claimed I didn't have enough space on iCloud for 7 GB of photos, and I said that I had deleted them all yesterday. Well, who knew -- I had to EMPTY the trash of the photos. I plowed around on the iphone, trying to figure out where I had 7 gb of photos, and then I found the trash full of the photos I deleted yesterday.

Who knew syncing an iPhone could be SO HARD. SO COMPLICATED. With so many steps and reboots and searching all the nooks and corners in the iphone.

And now I'm forced to have all my pictures to go to iCloud? I don't want that because I live rurally, and have limited access to wifi, and cell phone data is expensive. But anyway, I have my music synced, so I know how to do it in the future -- just delete all my photos and empty trash and turn back on iCloud photos. Why does it have to be so hard?

I found another fix to this problem that showed up sometime around Big Sur 11.4 to 11.2.

My problem was isolated to having referenced files in my iPhoto library.

At some point a Big Sur update caused sync to hand on reading photos library because it could no longer read referenced files.

This solved it for me:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252836906?login=true&page=1

Well, I did what you just did and found 12K of old pics that where flagged referenced. after I deleted them and copied the originals and made sure that the query of referenced pics was "0", my sync problem went away.

If you do the query again do you get "0" pics referenced? Make sure this is the case.

Otherwise, I am at a loss for the your continuing problem with syncing.

SOLVED in this way:

I've rebuilt from scratch a new library and it worked. I have about 10.000 fotos and about 100 albums.

I've done this because my library was very old, with some photos referenced and some internal. And I was needing a backup of the photos divided in folders in the same way they are divided in albums, so I've created a folder for each album in a SSD and copied photos from the app. Then I've deleted the old library, create a new and reimported each album. In this way I've fund and correct each error.

Actually, when I took a ton of photos off of my phone, problem solved. They aren't lost, just on my computer now.

this solved it for me. Referenced photos that had lost their reference at some point through mac upgrades in the past. Removed the referenced photàs, sorted now.

I just upgraded my iphone to 14.7.1 and Big Sur 11.5. I can sync the photo library. I did delete all the referenced photos and deleted ipod photo cache. Hope it helps

iPhone 12

I deleted the iPod Photo Cache folder. (My Library is on an external drive)

The phone was not connected when I did it.

PHOTOS was closed.

The phone was able to complete the synch without hanging on photos synch..

BUT I had to put the iPod Photo Cache folder back because PHOTOS did not recognize new photos that had already been imported.

(The iPod Photo Cache folder was not re-created when re attaching the phone)

So each time I re-connect the phone it would re-import every photo taken after the Cache Folder was removed.

So I'm Back to square one.

Update: Last email from Apple Tech yesterday offers no help. I am told they are working on it.

My iPad (pro 10.5" with latest IOS) does exactly the same thing.

Since its not critical for me, I restored it (clean wipe to factory) and then reinstalled IOS 14.6 and then I restored my Apps, libraries... from my latest backup. No dice. Same problem syncing stuck at "reading photos library"

Since the tech told me that the message is during the reading the "devices" photos library, I manually erased all my iPad photos (photo library has now 0 photos) and emptied the trash can so that no photos were left. Again, no dice.

I now have an iPad with all my apps back in place but no photos left and no way to add new books or music ( the old books and music are still there but the pics that I erased manually are gone of course with no way to add them back from my iMac library.

I don't intent to repeat this process with my iPhone 12 Pro.

This is a serious software glitch that I hope Apple addresses soon, which is likely in Version 11.4 of Big Sur.