User profile for user: Ricky_Beee
Ricky_Beee Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Can't "Unsync" photos from my iPhone - specifically the "Places" album

Hi community,


My goal:

Remove all the locally stored photos from my iPhone that were previously synced from my iMac. Why? I don't want them on there taking up space before I enable iCloud photos on the phone so i can see my photos that way instead.


The Problem:

On my iPhone, I've managed to get rid of the photo albums that were previously synced from my iMac (around 25,000 photos), but the iPhone is still showing that it has photos on it despite me having Unchecked "Sync photos to your device" in the iMac Finder iPhone Sync interface (see image below) and attempting to complete a Sync (which is an extremely temperamental process)


On my phone:

Settings > About > Photos says 5,532 photos.

Settings > About > Photos says 17GB of photo storage.

Photos app > "People and Places" section shows 8,228 photos against Places.


I have 485 photos in Recents which is all that I would expect to be stored locally on the phone + maybe a few hundred in some Shared albums (assuming they even store locally)


This doesn't really make any sense. For one thing there's misalignment between the count in the Settings app vs the Photos app Places album so that's weird. But generally It's like the phone is hanging onto a subsection of the old photos that were on the device previously but giving me no way to remove them.


I feel like the problem might be related to the syncing between iMac and iPhone via Finder which is always so hard to achieve smoothly. Every time I try to sync it gets stuck at Step 2 Preparing To Sync until I force quite the MDCrashReportTool in Activity Monitor as described here https://macreports.com/how-to-fix-finder-stuck-in-preparing-to-sync/ but then after than it will very often just go on to hang forever on Step 4 Waiting for changes to be applied


Devices:

iMac 2023 M3 chip, Sonoma 14.2.1

iPhone 15 Pro, iOS 17.2.1


I did very recently upgrade from an older iMac and an older iPhone but don't think that should be related


Many thanks for any help!




iPhone 15 Pro

Posted on Jan 1, 2024 9:26 PM

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User profile for user: Ricky_Beee
Ricky_Beee Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Posted on Jan 2, 2024 3:15 PM

Update from the next day from my original post...


I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Apple Support who agreed that a) it was wrong that the photos weren't being fully removed from the phone and b) that the sync between the iMac and iPhone is a really broken process at the moment. They couldn't find a solution.


However a lot of the photos HAVE now successfully gone from the phone, after these steps:

  • Some further Sync attempts (with the "Sync Photos to your device" still unchecked) that appeared to complete but didn't immediately change anything
  • Waiting overnight
  • Turning the phone off and back on several times.


Situation now:

Settings > About > Photos says 1,240 photos (I have 450 in Recents and about 300 in shared albums so would actually expect 750ish but this is pretty close now!)

Settings > About > Photos down to 7.91GB of photo storage.

Photos app > "People and Places" section down to 861 photos against Places. Still some "cached" photos in there that I wouldn't expect but much much better than it was.


My current conclusions are:

  • iMac/iPhone Syncing via Finder is really quite broken at the moment - both to successfully complete a sync of any sort but also to have it achieve what you want. Apple are aware of this.
  • Removing photos from your iphone that had previously been synced to it from a Mac leaves some "cached" photos on the phone storage even though you can't access those photos via an album, other than maybe from "Places"
  • The phone seems to manage to flush this cache to some extent, either due to waiting it out, or repeatedly trying to Unsync, or by repeated rebooting.

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User profile for user: Ricky_Beee
Ricky_Beee Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Jan 2, 2024 3:15 PM in response to Ricky_Beee

Update from the next day from my original post...


I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Apple Support who agreed that a) it was wrong that the photos weren't being fully removed from the phone and b) that the sync between the iMac and iPhone is a really broken process at the moment. They couldn't find a solution.


However a lot of the photos HAVE now successfully gone from the phone, after these steps:

  • Some further Sync attempts (with the "Sync Photos to your device" still unchecked) that appeared to complete but didn't immediately change anything
  • Waiting overnight
  • Turning the phone off and back on several times.


Situation now:

Settings > About > Photos says 1,240 photos (I have 450 in Recents and about 300 in shared albums so would actually expect 750ish but this is pretty close now!)

Settings > About > Photos down to 7.91GB of photo storage.

Photos app > "People and Places" section down to 861 photos against Places. Still some "cached" photos in there that I wouldn't expect but much much better than it was.


My current conclusions are:

  • iMac/iPhone Syncing via Finder is really quite broken at the moment - both to successfully complete a sync of any sort but also to have it achieve what you want. Apple are aware of this.
  • Removing photos from your iphone that had previously been synced to it from a Mac leaves some "cached" photos on the phone storage even though you can't access those photos via an album, other than maybe from "Places"
  • The phone seems to manage to flush this cache to some extent, either due to waiting it out, or repeatedly trying to Unsync, or by repeated rebooting.

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Can't "Unsync" photos from my iPhone - specifically the "Places" album

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