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

I also have this problem since I bought my i6+ when it came out. Still no solution, even using iOS 10 Beta 8....

This issue is still present in IOS 10, while doing sync from MAc OS Sierra. Doesn't it show how much interested Apple is in fixing this? You are right - they are totally ignoring this blatant bug that has been there for years! For those who does not believe easy steps to reproduce:

1/ Sync a sizeable amount of photos from your Mac to iOS device via iTunes (say, over 1,000 images located in over 10 folders. All goes well on the first time.

2/ Now try syncing with another Mac, to replace the synced albums with new ones - 99% probability you will start cursing right at that spot: old albums not deleted, or new albums not created, or created, but with zero images in them (you get empty albums on you iOS device), etc.

I have been there at least a dozen times, with different macs, and ios devices (both iphones and ipads, including latest ipad pro 9.7") - the bug is very well and very alive!

Apple, please do something, fix the itunes sync or let us sync the files manually for God's sake!

At first we had this issue with my wife´s iphone 6 with ios 9, but not with mine. With the ios 10 update, my iphone started acting out, messing -- as described by many in this thread--, the same photo library that we update via iTunes sync.

We found a solution for both cases.

After reading this thread I deleted the "iPod Photo Cache" file on my pc and changed the iTunes sync folder to a new empty one. Synced the iphone with the idea all pics were going to be deleted and it seemed that way. However, when I checked: settings > general > information, although it showed 0 photos; on general > storage & iCloud > storage management, the photo app showed it was using 1.7 Gbytes. Meaning that somewhere the iphone photo app retained a big stash of pictures. So I went to: configuration > iCloud > photos, and changed all iCloud options to off, rebooted the iphone and when it came back online it automatically started a process that restored many folders and pictures, the ones that always messed things up. I waited for the restoration process to end and synced again the iphone with itunes so the empty folder configuration was able to overwrite the restored photos. And so it did, after this sync I went again to: settings > general > information, where it showed the device had 0 pics and in: general > storage & iCloud > storage management, the photo app showed only a 96 Mbytes usage. This confirmed that the iphone photo app had no pictures left. To be on the safe side I then again rebooted the iphone and the iTunes on the desktop, selected the picture folders I wanted to sync again, and voila, order was restored, my folders and pictures were once again the way I wanted them to be. I once again rebooted the iphone to see if the problem would come back and so far, after two days and many reboots, all is well. Hope this helps anyone.

What I think happened is that users like me that like to use the itunes sync option, sometimes get back to our libraries and overwrite old versions of the pictures with better ones, and somehow the iphone starts to backup the files it deems inconsistent. So when we reboot our devices or update --as many have complained--, the crazy restore process begins and we end up with a messed up library. I think the iTunes iphone or ipad sync process should have a better validation process, and that’s the root cause Apple has address. Meanwhile this solution worked on two different iphones one with ios 9 and the other with ios 10. Meanwhile, in the future I will be careful first to remove via iTunes any folders I want to overwrite so the iphone removes all the files and no inconsistencies occur.

How long are we going to put up with this in our premium devices?! We waste tons of time looking for workarounds for bugs that should have been eliminated by Apple years ago!

My first ever iPhone (7) after having used Android since version 3 and this is one of the first problems I've run into. Hoooo boy.

I have the same problem on my iPad Air 2 and my iPhone 6, my wife's iPad mini 4 and her iPhone 6s, all on ios9 up to latest version 10.1.1

I can sort the mess out by unsyncing all photos in iTunes, then syncing them again. I.e. Removing our entire library from the device and then reinstalling it. The photo albums stay in order for anything from a few days to a few weeks and then we get multiple copies of each album appearing with all of the duplicate albums full of the correct number of photos that should be in the album, but a totally random selection of photos.

This has been going on for well over a year. I'm now unsure why we have spent £thousands on this kit.

Apple - I can find references to this problem going back at least 4 years, don't you care that this is what we'd expect from Microsoft and not from Apple!

Same here. For years. Starting with iPhone 5, iPad 2, iPhone 6+, now 7+.

I think the common thread is most of us have larger than average photos on our devices. I have 17000+ photos. The average users probably only has a couple hundred photos. Apple is not fixing it because we are likely only 1-2% of the users.

I am device agnostic. I really miss only need to pop in my Sd card in an android phone and call it a day.

Update to the situation.

After reading various responses on different forums I have successfully narrowed down the problem and have a fully reproducible and correctable scenario.

I have reproduced the same problem on my iPad Air 2 and my iPhone 6, my wife's iPad mini 4 and her iPhone 5s.

We have 2,000 photos organised into about 50 albums on our Macs, and synced the folders from the Macs to the iPads and iPhones using iTunes. This I did immediately after update 10.1.1. Since then, up to today they all remained perfectly organised as we expected on the 4 devices.

Seeing that update 10.2 is available, I checked all 4 this morning and the photos were still all perfectly OK, all 2000 in the 50 separate albums.

I then in turn updated all 4 devices. Immediately the update completed the photo libraries on all 4 devices were scrambled, with the same 2000 photos in the same 50 Albums, but also randomly duplicated in about another 100 albums with the same names as the originals.

On two of the devices I have managed to restore order by simply forcing a sync in iTunes, which did not copy any photos from the Macs to the devices, but deleted the spurious albums. On the other two I have had to delete all the photos by unchecking Sync Photos in iTunes and then syncing and then selecting Sync Photos and recopying all 2000 again.

As someone mentioned before, the easiest way to reorganize the scrambled photo album is to un-check one folder/album (pick the smallest one) from iTunes and sync with the phone. The whole album will be in order again. Check the unchecked album to sync again to get it back.

I have about 19,000 photos in my 256g iPhone 7+. It's unusable if they are not in their folders.