Photos albums are not syncing to my iPhone

One thing you can try is to ensure that iCloud Photos is enabled on both your Mac and your iPhone. This feature automatically uploads and stores your entire photo library in iCloud, making it accessible across all your devices. To check if iCloud Photos is enabled on your Mac, open the Photos app, go to "Photos" > "Preferences" > "iCloud," and make sure the "iCloud Photos" option is checked. On your iPhone, you can check this by going to "Settings" > "[Your Name]" > "iCloud" > "Photos" and ensuring that the "iCloud Photos" toggle is turned on.

If iCloud Photos is already enabled and you're still experiencing issues with album syncing, you can try toggling the iCloud Photos option off and then back on again on both your Mac and iPhone. This can sometimes resolve syncing issues by refreshing the connection between your devices and iCloud.

Additionally, make sure that both your Mac and iPhone are connected to a stable Wi-Fi network, as syncing large numbers of photos over cellular data may not be reliable.

If the issue persists after trying these steps, you may want to consider reaching out to Official Apple Support for further assistance.

Syncing iPhoto/Photos libraries from the Mac to iOS/iPadOS devices has been flaky. A few years ago I got so frustrated that I even sent email to Tim Cook hoping for a Jobsian moment (a rare occasion when a user complains about some long standing issue to the upper level and it then gets fixed) but got only a lukewarm reply from some of his secretaries suggesting a phone consultation when I already had poured all my previous troubleshooting to the initial post.

But since that it has got a little better although my recent sync failed to export at least one image. As a last resort I have occasionally nuked the existing synced library from the mobile device, delete Photos Library.photoslibrary > iPod Photo Cache folder (mere mortals should be very careful when opening that package because editing its contents might corrupt it so make a backup before doing so), and then the sync has usually worked.

One explanation for the flaky behavior I have heard is that Apple wants to push users to iCloud Photos which AFAIK works quite well. But I prefer to keep images and movies local.

Me too. I synced photos to an album today, but the album doesn't appear on my iPhone 15. However, when I click All Photos and select Years, the newly-synced images to appear—they are getting onto my iPhone, just not into an album. On my Mac I copied the new image files into a folder that does appear on my iPhone, synced the iPhone and those new images DO appear in that folder. So, to add photos to an album, I must add them only to an album that already appears on my iPhone.

I'm having the exact same issue.

Back up my iPhone to my iMac and I don't use iCloud Photo Sharing.

Photos on both devices but No Photo Albums on iPhone anymore.

iMac

Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020 3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9

AMD Radeon Pro 5700 8 GB

Sonoma 14.4.1 (23E224)

iPhone 14 Pro Max

iOS 17.5.1

Me too. I synced photos to an album today, but the album doesn't appear on my iPhone 15. However, when I click All Photos and select Years, the newly-synced images to appear—they are getting onto my iPhone, just not into an album.