Cannot sync photos "iPhoto library is not yet available"

All I did was quit Photos and iTunes, then restart iTunes. Sync was fine after that.

Re: Cannot sync photos "iPhoto library is not yet available"

Thanks for this simple fix. Save a lot of time and worked for me running El Capitan and the latest iTunes and iPhoto as of 09/06/17.

Just in case anybody here has yet to resolve their issue: a 45 minute apple care call with a wonderfully helpful technician, Scott, solved the issue. This may be specific to my particular issue, nonetheless, it could potentially help you.

My computer was already running incredibly slow, about a 30 second to no exaggeration up to 5 minutes lag between clicking on items, we reinstalled Sierra OS. System running much smoother, I thought this would take care of the syncing issue seeing that it was a fresh install. The issue persisted.

It wasn't until Scott explained to me, after walking me through the Activity Monitor, that the computer was still attempting to "clean up" and "scan" the photos library (one of the notifications that would pop-up when attempting to sync 'Your photos library is not yet available') was because it was, in fact, not yet available. The computer was still reading.

Here's what we did:

After a fresh re-installament of Sierra OS, we went into system preferences > energy saver > power adapter >computer sleep turned to 'never' > display sleep, 10 min > uncheck 'put hard disks to sleep when possible' > check 'wake for network access'

He then advised me to let the computer run without closing it down or putting it to sleep, laptop left open (display would sleep but not actual computer) for up to two days. This way it would allow the system to finish reading all items, therefor completing the re-installment process.

I spoke with him one day ago, plugged the phone in today, synced it, everything went absolutely smooth on the first sync! Yay! Now I go back into system preferences to change my energy saver preferences back to my normal settings.

I hope my explanation was clear and helpful to you.

Happy New Year! - Dara

I too had the same problem and took the following steps to fix it completely, on my iPhone and iPad:

1. Deleted the iPod Photos Cache (in the Photos Library)

2. Rebuilt the Photos library (my library is about 150 (GB)

3. Rebooted the Mac and iPhone.

4. Connected the Phone via USB Cable directly to my Mac (previously I was running through a USB hub).

5. Selected the albums to sync (about 3-4 at a time).

Now the process works smoothly and with no issues.

Hope you all find this useful

Soooooo:

This worked for only two sync's and then it stumbled and stopped again. Since I had already backed up and reinstalled the IOS, I analyzed this from the angle that what if the backup was corrupted, and that this was causing the problem. Did a clean install. Set up as a new phone and WALA...!

Problem fixed. No more hesitation when going to copy pictures to the phone. Take about 15 seconds to prepare about 5000 pictures for uploading to iPhone.

BOTTOM LINE: If you tried everything else, try a fresh install. Yes, it's a *****, but sometimes new is better than trying to work a miracle.

I had a similar issue when I received this error in iTunes when I was trying to sync from an iPhone 6.

My scenario was a bit different...

- Had deleted 3000 photos from phone to make more space

- When I was synching it to iTunes I was getting this error at step 6 of 7 of the sync and the sync wasn't completing

- Therefore, it was still showing that there was all these photos on the iPhone

Solution

- On the iPhone, I went to > Photos app > Albums > "Recently Deleted Photos" (which essentially was the "Trash" which had soft deleted the files, but it was still taking up capacity"

- I deleted the photos from this album

- Re-synced in iTunes and it worked, capacity showing much less as expected

Notes:

- Make sure you make / have a previous back up first before deleting!!!

- I think there could be a better CX by identifying how much % of storage is stored in the recently deleted photos, so people can be aware of it

Hope this helps some people 🙂

Thanks for the previous posts which helped me figure out my situation.

I'm running Sierra and began having trouble once I ran iOS 11 on my iPhone. The way I had success syncing again with my Photos app was to go into the Photos app on my Mac>Preferences>General and then under library location select "Use as System Photo Library". I closed out of both iTunes and Photos and then re-opened iTunes and was able to choose my Photos library.

I synced my photos in the library from "Photos" (iPhoto) via iTunes to my iPhone for several years without any issues.

My Photos library is saved on a NAS and works perfectly with the Photos app. I can add, change and delete photos in the library.

Since the iTunes update to the version 12.7.0 recently, I always get the message "iTunes cannot sync photos to the iPhone "iPhone" because your iPhoto library is not yet available. Please try again later."

Only the sync from iTunes to my iPhone does not work anymore. On the otherhand I can sync the photos from the same library to my iPad without any problems.

Does anyone have an the same issues or an idea on how to solve it?

@CookieDuster Try rebooting your iPhone and Mac, then synch just one event. If successful, then selected All Photos.

You are welcome to view the link provided below for more fixes

iTunes: Unable to sync photos - Apple Support

Settings > iCloud > Photos > iCloud Photo Library (Beta) = "Off"

Yes, I was suggesting you turn off iCloud Photo Library. I believe it is "On" by default. Glad you have it off!

Are you running the current version of iPhoto on your Mac (9.6)? Does it display your photos correctly? In other words, does the current version locate your iPhoto library without any issues?

If you don't have the current version, you should get it (from the Mac's App Store). If you have the current version but it cannot locate your iPhoto library, hold the option key down while opening iPhoto from the dock and you will be able to specify the library's location.

@CookieDuster

We going to run a test and see if if this solution works. Lets try 🙂

On your super cool imac:

1. go to system preferences>users & group>create a new account and name it test (make sure you set it as an admin account)
2. get an external hd and plug it in
3. next go to finder>pictures>and copy iphoto library that is located there and put in the external hd

1. now log into the test account
2. transfer the iphoto library from external to pictures folder. if you see the same file there, do not worry you are just overwriting it.
3. once that complete, I would like for you to test your iphone and see if it syncs over.

Thanks!