Photos sync'd to iPhone from iTunes all messed up in iOS 8.1

Has anyone discovered an answer to this weird anomaly? With 21,000 photos repeated but in random order and in different folders all over the place it is a mess! Strangely though they are all ok on the first 'set' when you scroll down and then on the repeats they are all over the place. No logical reason?! I also noticed the duplicates don't actually take any additional storage space!? Like someone has said it has only happened since the last minor update. I'm new to the forum, do Apple look at these posts and use the info to improve or fix things in future updates or is it something that one has to email them about? Here's hoping a fix is on the horizon as it was fine before!

On a slightly related subject to those fellow photo lovers that have tens of thousands of photos on their sync folder, am I correct in thinking that if when I do a regular sync through itunes and I have no extra photos to import since my previous sync can I uncheck the sync photos box and click leave photos on iPhone when the prompt box appears to aid in the speed of the sync? Those of you with many photos will understand what I'm getting at when you seem to wait forever while iTunes is 'importing photos'!

Thanks for anyones help on this.

So glad to hear I'm not the only one having this issue. I couldn't even figure out how to describe it properly. Part of me wonders if it's Apple's subtle way of pushing people onto their new iCloud Photo Library, or if that's what's actually causing the issues.

I even tried deleting the iPod Photo Cache folder from my computer and re-syncing everything again from the beginning, and it still does it. This happens on both my iPad and iPhone. Wondering if it could be because I have two devices. Anyone getting this with only one device?

Hi

Just to add to this - I have the same issue on an iphone 5s and an ipad 3, and this is syncing with itunes on a windows PC. Just thought worth mentioning as others have talked about the issue when syncing with itunes on a mac.

I should have mentioned I'm on Windows 8.1.

I have a friend to which this is also happening, but she's on a Mac. She also has an iPad, though.

Same problem here, across iPad mini 2, IPad Air and iPhone 5, all synce'd from iTunes on a PC.

I found a mini solution "better than nothing".

If u have your photos on your PC u can seperate them to folders by YEAR or by Month or even by YEAR THEN MONTH. After u create the year folder or the year folder with a month subfolder in it, go to your photos and make the view in details (right click>views>details) then choose to sort by date option (choose only "date" dont choose "date created" or "date modified" or any thing else). Make the sort descending by clicking on the date tab. After that select the photos with the same month or with the same year by clicking on for instance the 31 dec 2014 photo and scrol down to 1 January 2014 photo then (shift+click) then move them to 2014 folder. Notice that the latest is at the top on the new folder if not click on the date tab in the details view. Do the same if u want to sorted by month . Finally Sync the folder which contains all your photos years folders. Hope it helps

So has anybody actually been able to solve this problem? I thought it was resolved with iOS 8.3, but it's started doing it again recently.

Hello,

I have the same issue, iPhone 5 synced from Macbook Pro, it has added 141 ALBUMS to my phone alongside the photos i originally wanted synced! and mine too are all mixed up random folders with random photos which should be in other photos. its literally thousands of extra photos in 141 albums and i just don't know what to do to get rid of them. Does Apple actually read these threads or answer the questions and solve the issues?

Same thing on 8.4.1, after some time albums get messed up and all pictures in them.

Same problem here.

It started with ios8, the famous "deleted" folder all over the place, never in the same place in the middle of the albums.

An iphone 5S, I also have many photos and the folders ended up duplicated with photos inside randomly messed up, parrallel to the normal organisation.

Photo counter not taking into account the duplication.

I thought is was because my memory was limited, I had a 64Go and with all photo & music, I had less than 10Go available.

Countless calls to Apple, no clue, no help and no post on the forum I thought I was alone...

So I bought a 6 with 128Go and... during a few months it was ok but the last 2 or 3 updates... messed up photos again.

Only way is to resync, all but one folder containing only 1 photo otherwise it doesn't go.

Then resync all photos and be stressed for that it doesn't happen again.

I actually waited a few days for this update as I was affraid...

I have a similar issue with music, wrong dates or album photos, so album orders wrong when you listen to them...

So I put a space after the name of each bands and Apple Music lets me alone because it doesn't recognise them and don't mess all my music up.

Thing is... I don't have all the new info that are nice when Apple Music works well...

We don't buy Apple for this kind of thing... yesterday new adverstisement of Apple on TV "because we do phone and software it works perfectly"...

I don't think so...

Same issue

Once I sync again with itunes it gets fixed. Then it comes back after a few days.

It might be some app that is accessing photos and messing it up. If some of you with few apps on your iphone could list them then maybe we can see which one is in common.

I have 250 apps so might be too many to list.

I have only those Apps asking for access to photo : DayOne, MemoPad, PostitPlus, ScannerPro, Snapseed, Waze, Whatsapp.

I didn't give access to Photo to Waze & Whatsapp.

Last time I had the issue corresponded to last iOS update + instal of MemoPad creating a folder in photo (folder called memo).

This is an interesting remark because maybe ScannerPro has an influence as it is also bugging when making update and loosing icloud stored scans...

But as far as I recal, the event that started it all was the photo update in iOS8 and the creation of the panorama & recently deleted folders.

At the beginning,those 2 were floating all over the place in my folders.

Now they stabilised at the top but regularly I have a mess happening, usually when updating iOS.

So yes interesting idea but for me the root is in iOS Photo and the link to APps maybe.

Why is Apple doing nothing ?

Here we go iOs 9... all good, photos not messed up after updates... I do a screen shot of something and guess what... photos messed up ;-)

So I don't think it's an app but purely photo that has a bug.

So please Apple, investigate this.

iOS 9.01, then iOS 9.02... same thing, photo folders doubled up after upgrade.

1 list like I have it on my computer, another list of same folders but photo messed up inside.

In between updates no issue.

I just realised something...

I have a folder that I called "2000000 Pellicule" (=Film in french & I name all my folders starting with YYYYMMDD so they order themselves and want this one on top, in which I put film photo that I want to keep separate but not indefinitelly ike other).

I am starting to wonder if this is not creating the issue and iOS is bugged because it has a "Film" iOS standard folder and see another one with the same name and gets troubled...

2 reason for that.

I still have my old 5S and it doesn't have this "20000000 Film" folder but similar apps & quantity of photos than my 6.

It didn't get the issue at iOS 9 and 9.01.

But it was getting it all along when I used it for me and had the famous "20000000 Film" folder...

I just noticed now on my 6 that all foders have a doubled ghost copy, in which photos are in a messed up order.

But the "20000000 Film" folder... is not doubled !!!!

At least I noticed this time.

So I just renamed it with a name different to any of the standad folders of photo app.

And I will see next update. I will also update the 5S this week and see if the update creates not issues and let you know.

The problem emerged as soon as I updated to ios9 and the latest iTunes:

everything syncs fine: music, podcasts , videos, books
all except photos:

I've tried :
1. de-selecting [ ] Sync Photos, then re-selecting again [✓] Sync Photos
2. deleting the Photo Cache
3. REBOOT
4. HARD RESET, RESTORE (each reset-restore session would take me 4-5 hours; and i've been doing this a dozen times straight for the entire two weeks)

5. re-named source photo folder, re-select

and I still get the following issues:

Total amount of photos will never be synced 100%, most of the time it's 50% synced, and whatever that DOES get synced- either ends up having folders and photos duplicated.
And why would it be saying 0 photos? When I open an album,there are photos in it - except that it's all scrambled up. Look, call me OCD but I really want my oregano to be in the oregano jar, thyme in thyme , and rosemary in rosemary.

And if things aren't duplicated, I'd get the original amount of folders (as set-up in my computer), whatever that was synced will be in their respectable folders, and I'd get empty folders as if it's never been synced what-so-ever.

I've tried numerous times doing the whole 'selected folder' thing and I'd end up with the duplicate-issue.

Not to mention that the Photos app is always in "Syncing..." mode, which bugs the **** out of me because this appears even when my device's unplugged.

It has never been a disc space/device space issue as I have successfully synced 24k photos into my iPod without much of a hassle (granted,it's never been 100% synced, but majority of my photos; 95% of it is, so I'm rather alright)

I've tried downsizing the amount of images synced, 24k -> 18k , seeing how iTunes would only sync 18k/24k photos before 'finishing sync' all of a sudden. So I thought, maybe 18k's the 'safe' amount to upload as the ios hasn't been optimized to be able to sync more than that: so I synced 18k or so, only to find out I've only managed to sync 6k photos in total.

I've concluded that no matter what amount: be it just 20 photos, something will 'disrupt' your sync session and you'd probably be getting 5 photos instead.

ios7 was great- no issues. ios8 started making it buggy for me, I am now using ios 9.0.2 and the problem is even bigger than the predecessors. What the **** is going on Apple?!

iPod Touch 5th gen, iOS 9.0.2
Windows 8
iTunes 12.3 (64bit)