Does anything have a reliable way of transferring a large number of photos from a Mac to an iPhone?

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Does anything have a reliable way of transferring a large number of photos from a Mac to an iPhone?

I have tried through several operating systems (on Mac and on iPhone) to move a large number of photos from my Mac (M3 MacBook Pro 16 inch) to my iPhone (14 Pro Max with 1TB of storage). I have about 100K of photos I want to move up to the iPhone, but have been having issues trying this for over a year now. Basically I have a large PhotoLibrary and when I connect my iPhone to my Mac with a lightning cable I have the Finder configured to sync several albums with around 100K pictures). Every time I try it fails - acting like it has sent the photos but then having synching never working (I have let it sit for 3 days!). And when I check the iPhone none of the pictures were moved. I have to get down to small groups of photos, only 5K or so, before the pictures transfer. I REALLY want to move them all, not spend hours moving them over in small groups. I have also reported this to Photos feedback for over a year now and nothing ever seems to get fixed. So.... does ANYONE have a reliable way of moving a large number of photos from a Mac to an iPhone? Is there a 3rd party solution that works? HELP and TIA.

MacBook Pro (M3 Max, 2023)

Posted on Aug 8, 2024 2:33 PM

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Answer 1

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Yer_Man

Level 10

166,086 points

Aug 8, 2024 3:53 PM in response to Arthur Busbey

Two alternative apps that might help. Both are alternatives to Photos, but more capable. Obviously, as they are third party apps, there is a cost involved.

Mylio. Very user friendly, doesn't need to use a cloud or even the internet, it will sync the images over your home network. I know of one person managing over a million - yes 1,000,000 - images with Mylio. You can also optimise the images for the screen size of the phone. (https://mylio.com/)

or

Lightroom CC. Works in a different way. It uploads all the images to its server, then shares them to your devices via an app. Again, more capable and reliable than Photos and iCloud, IMHO. (Note that Adobe have two products; Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic. It's the CC version you want. (https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/plans.html - It's the Lightroom with 1TB storage that you want.)

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Answer 2

muguy

Level 10

92,060 points

Aug 8, 2024 2:39 PM in response to Arthur Busbey

It may be that 100k pictures will not fit on the device; that may be causing issues. Your best bet is to sync in small batched by attaching with a cable or to enable iCloud Photos to transfer optimized photos onto the device. Either way an initial transfer may take days to complete with such a large library.

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Answer 3

Aug 8, 2024 2:47 PM in response to muguy

The target iPhone has 1TB of storage and the photos take up about 200 GB - so there is absolutely no space issue. In my email I described that I was able to move photos over cable in small batches (< 5K slides) and that when I tried the whole 100K photos I let it sit for 3 days with no luck - and when I finally stopped the so-called transfer none of the pictures had absolutely been uploaded to the iPhone. iCloud is out of the question for a variety of technical issues. So I still hope someone has had luck using another technique or other software to effect such a large transfer of photos. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

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Answer 4

Aug 9, 2024 7:02 AM in response to Arthur Busbey

I don't get it. iCloud Photos should work fine for this.

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Does anything have a reliable way of transferring a large number of photos from a Mac to an iPhone?

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