Hidden photos not synced to iOS from Photos on macOS

Until at least July 30th, I was able to import on my Macbook Pro, through the Mac Photos app, all my photos from my iPhone (XR) whether the photos were in the hidden folder of my iPhone or not.

I discovered today that the photos imported on my Macbook Pro do not contain anymore my hidden photos from my iPhone...

What a shame.

Paying 800+€ for an iPhone and 2500+€ on a Macbook Pro to have features removed is scandalous!

MachoGothenburg wrote:

Ok, so Apple limit the functionality to get more users to use the cloud services instead.

When there is nothing in hardware that should block it. I should consider it a bug that the functionality is not the same between cloud and "local" storage. That you need to do tricky workaround to achieve what you want. That is not the user friendly work that I thought Apple was when I got it.

You may want to send a feature request to Apple to make the manual syncing (without using iCloud features) more versatile. Currently iCloud Photos is the only way to get a perfect syncing. The feedback form is here: Feedback - Photos - Apple

I’ve been frustrated by this exact same issue. I called Apple Support via phone multiple times and had the question escalated as high as it could go. They informed me it was not possible to sync my iPhone using Finder with the Hidden album.

I thought it strange Apple would allow the Hidden folder to be an option to sync with iPhone when using Finder, then fail to sync the photos, every single time.

I’m planning to submit a feature request because this should work, and it would be very helpful if it did. Right now I have to place all my hidden photos into a folder on Mac and sync that directly to iPhone (which then doesn’t allow me to sync ANYTHING from Apple Photos, since you can only sync one or the other: a local folder, or pictures from albums in Apple Photos, but not both simultaneously). The local folder isn’t password-protected, nor is the resulting synced album on iPhone. Oh well. At least the phone has a passcode.

How are you syncing the devices? Manually with the Finder?

When you sync manually and not with iCloud Photos, the synced photos will be shown in your Photos Library, but not properly imported into the Photos Library. They are appearing in a special section of albums "From My Mac". Is there an additional Hidden album?

You will get a better syncing, if you are using iCloud Photos. Then the Hidden album on your iPhone will be identical to the Hidden album on your Mac. At least it is identical on my iPad, my iPhone, and my Macs.

I can understand that, but then you will not have a true syncing, because the manually synced photos are handled differently on the iPhone and not properly integrated in the predefined albums "Hidden". "Imports", etc.

Instead of hiding the photos on the Mac you may want to add the photos to a different album, call it "to be hidden", and hide them on your iPhone after you synced them to the iPhone. Hopefully they will then appear in the Hidden album on the iPhone.

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Agreed with jerem_ko - this used to work without icloud anything - all hidden photos from iphone would get imported into mac photos on import into regular library until recently - either ios 17.03 stopped it or the very buggy mac sonoma 14

This is apples way of trying to force people to iCloud. Sorry. It’ll never work with me. It’s one thing to surreptitiously steal my photos, but quite another to voluntarily ask me to upload them. I’m at the point where I’m going to needing a new phone AND a new PC. Right now I’m all Apple, but starting to think Samsung S24 with some powerful Windows box might not be so bad. Can’t say I’ll switch for sure, but for sure I’ll be looking at options.