How can I avoid syncing of photos between iMac and iPad?

Looks like a difficult question, since only the Mod changed my title. I’m a mod myself on a Belgian digital photography forum, but I don’t think i would’ve changed the title: I wrote ‘stop’, which was replaced by ‘avoid’, but I really meant ‘stop’.

Is the only way to avoid such an event by pulling the plug?

Any way, yesterday I kept my iPad Air far away from my iMac, although I wanted to make a backup. As there was still no reaction here today, I did connect the iPad with the iMac through the dedicated cable (both ends USB-C) this afternoon, but kept my hand very closely by the connection on the iPad. The same situation as I described above, after all standard operations, and making sure not one album was selected, the Mac began transferring all >20000 photos again to the iPad, but I pulled the plug at that moment.

Any way, still quite happy with my new iPad, I began organising my apps and data, including the photos in Photos, and there I came across enough problems to give me another sleepless night.

But I’ll try to solve the stop syncing problem first before starting another topic, e.g. about ‘favourite’ photos.

Thanks for your reply, but sorry: not helpful. Not one of my devices uses iCloud for photos. I emphasised this in my opening post. I have no idea what is going wrong, but, although I use iCloud for passwords, mail..., I only make use of the free 5 GB (?) and I'm a photographer, so no: no photos.

But re-reading your reply, I'm going to sign out my Mac from iCloud and try again to plug my iPad in, without any photo syncing going on. I will let you know tomorrow.

Thanks for your reply. No matter which folder or option is selected or not, syncing just goes on and on.

This is (almost) the situation you didn't understand, only that now one single folder is selected:

I read about this suggested solution (I believe it was a reply by Leonie) in a different topic about syncing, and was hoping in this way to overwrite all photos on my iPad, but it did not work either. Syncing just goes on and on (just look at the bottom of my screenshot) until I pull the plug.

Thanks for your reply and for the links you gave. Unfortunately none of the suggestions helped. I have to keep 'pulling the plug' to stop synchronisation, no matter what checkboxes or radio buttons I have ticked or unticked. I'm already back at >2000 photos on my iPad now and this number increases each time I connect the iPad to the Mac.

I even tried 'tricking the sync process' by moving the Photo Library.photolibrary file out of the Pictures folder. That didn't work!

There's something else suspicious about the newly uploaded photos (those that are synced after having set up my new iPad from the old iPad): I can only apply the favourite symbol (❤️) to the original photos (some 400), but not to any photo newly added through syncing. But much worse: I can only delete one or more photos from the original collection, but the trash symbol (🗑️) is greyed out for all the others. And I need to get rid of them.

Or is it possible to delete the Photos app from my iPad (which should also remove all data) and then restore Photos by downloading from the AppStore?

In any case: I'm not going to do anything before I hear more from you good people on this board. Know how much I appreciate your help.

So now my question is more desperate: how can I get things fixed in another way than resetting the new iPad to default and setting it up again from the old one, which -fortunately- I have not wiped yet? That would be my third attempt.

Thanks for your swift reply. Answering your (dumb?) question "Are you sure it's actually copying across all 20,000 photos or is it just going through all the photos in your library to work out which ones are in the "_SyncOnlyThisAlbum" album? " It is actually copying across all photos. I see at the bottom of my screen (see the screenshot in my reply to your first reaction) the number of copying photos increasing, and on the iPad I see the number of current photos on my iPad. And that number is getting higher and higher. The last reset of the iPad I did was around 7000 photos, I believe.

Have you got any answer to my question in a reply to Mac Jim ID. Should I remove the Photos app from my iPad, will it also remove all photos present at this time (2145)?

I'm afraid that if I let synching go on, it will fill up the iPad. And -as shown above in one of my replies- those photos cannot be made favourites or (even worse) cannot be deleted! That might have something to do with the fact that I am each time interrupting the synching process when I pull the plug.

Thank you, Zurarczurx, for your reply. I have a backup (a clone) of my entire iMac, including the Photo libraries. I've always been worried about synching, because if I remove them from my iPad (or iPhone), I don't want them removed from my iMac or external HDs. That's the reason (besides the sizes of my libraries) why I don't use iCloud for any photo synching.

It's weekend so perhaps there will be more reponses later on. I appreciate your input.

Four, which I wouldn't mind having on my new iPad. As I stated in another reply, I tried the trick suggested in a different discussion about syncing. Unfortunately it didn't work in my case. Nothing is erased, only flooded with hundreds of photos I don't want on my iPad.

Thanks, Zurarczurx. You're right: it is driving me crazy! I hesitate to restore the iPad again, because that was my first big counterattack, and in the end the situation was unchanged afterwards, and I had to set my new iPad to my hand again. I'm quite happy with the M2, it's so much faster and brighter that the old Gen5.

I have meanwhile contacted the online seller, but as it's weekend so I'll have to wait till tomorrow. My intention is to contact Apple support and have them sorted things out.

Meanwhile, I'm still thinking serious of deleting the Photos app, and downloading it again from the Apple store. I can then move some photos from the iMac to the iPad through Airdrop and see it they behave normally.

I will keep you and anyone else who is interested informed, and would still be happy with any good advice.