How to sync home videos to an iPad?

If you have a compatible video file (some aren't), you can just drag and drop those files to the iPad in Finder once it's connected. Just anywhere in the window. As far as I know, this is manually done, although I think it might be possible to sync a directory with different photos and videos to an iPad, but that's going to be viewable in Photos and not TV. If you don't have any video files manually loaded, the category won't even show up in the TV Library in Home Videos. At least for me, I can manually delete videos, and once they're all deleted the Home Videos category goes away until at least one is loaded.

Once you have at one video file loaded, you can see a list of them by clicking on the "Manage Storage" button in Finder for your iPad, and select Movies. For me these are what show up as "Home Videos" category of the TV app.

I only drag them from random directory locations, including external drives, flash drives, etc. I can copy over from my old archives or just video that I’ve downloaded from the internet.

I don’t have my Mac with me now so I can’t really test any other way. But I the only way I recall I’ve ever had anything show up in my iPad’s “Home Videos” category in the TV app was by manually dragging a file to the iPad. It shows up both in “Home Videos” and “Downloaded”. The Home Videos category on an iPad isn’t synced, but whatever random video is copied over manually.

I'm home now and tried it on my Mac running Catalina, so your setup might be different.

I found some old video I have saved in a random directory and dragged it to an open Apple TV window, and that loaded the video file into "Home Videos". It also copies it into a specific storage directory on my boot volume. Then I dragged that video file into an open window for my iPad, and it ended up in Home Videos and

But it's not sync'ed per se. Each video has to be loaded into an iPad manually. It's also possible to drag in multiple video files at once and it will load them sequentially.

I Had A Similar Problem. This is a path that will work on IOS 16.7 device

1) make sure you have AppleTv on your PC/Mac and your ios device installed

2) import your home movie using H.264. MP4 will not work (in my case Monterey/ios 16) to your Appletv app on PC/Mac.

3) Now when Syncing iPad go to movies panel and you will see videos you can sync. then just do as you would if syncing Music, Photos ect.

4)going to your ios device in AppleTV you will now see a folder labeled home video also in your PC/Mac as well

I hope this helps

how to transfer my home videos which are on the Mac onto my iPad. If I airdrop, they end up in Photos as a black rectangle with no visible info. they play but there is no way to label or sort. Apple really fumbled the ball here. How do I do it?

Have you read Sync movies between your Mac and iPhone, iPad or iPod touch – Apple Support (UK)