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How and I sync my home videos to my iPad? When I connect the iPad to my Mac, in Finder there is movies and TV Shows, but no home videos.
iPad Pro (6th generation)
Yes, I have read that. The Apple support omits any reference to Home Video, the category that appears on my Mac. Movies and TV Shows are categories, which can then be synced, but there is no Home Video category on the 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.
Files in my Home Vides on the TV app on my Mac do not transfer to my iPad when I try dragging them into the iPad that is connected by cable. The home video files simply do not transfer until I change their info to categorize them as either Movies or TV Shows.
I can see a list of dozens of files on my Mac in the TV app "Home Video" category. Your directions confuse me because Movies is a separate category from Home Videos on the Mac. Sure, I can put my home videos in the "Movies" category, and then they will sync over, but then my home videos will be mixed with my movies on the Mac.
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.
What you described does not work for me. When I try to drag a home video file from my Mac onto my iPad, the file does not copy over. I tried with both Monterey and Ventura.
I can drag video files with "Movie" or "TV Show" set in the file info onto the iPad. However, if the file information is set to "Home Video," the file will not copy to my iPad.
Note the screen shot below from the Apple support article that you mentioned. There is no "Home Videos" but only Movies and TV Shows.
Thank you for further clarification!
How to sync home videos to an iPad?
