Photo folder greyed out and unable to Sync through iTunes to my iPhone

Can someone please help? All that I want to do is import one photo (or video) onto my iphone from my mac iphotos. Separate from all of the explanations here, my issue should literally not exist, because the photos that I am trying to put back on my phone were CREATED on this phone. All that I did was back up my phone onto my macbook air automatically. All of my photos are on my macbook photos app....They are removed from my iphone (to save space), and I just want to add ONE back onto my phone. In the time that I have typed this, I would have already completed this simple function on my android, or literally any other phone on earth....not to hate on apple, but this is just insane...does anyone have thoughts on this? thanks guys

I know this is a year later, but I had the same problem trying to sync photo's to my iphone. I found an article (sorry I didn't document who wrote it, but i give them credit whoever did) that told me that you have to designate a Library in preference's when you have more than one library. 1) To do that you quit Photos, (2) Hold down Option key, then open Photos. One of the photo libraries is already designated as YourLibraryName (System Photo Library). (3) Choose the library you want to designate as the System Photo Library. (4) After Photos opens the library, choose Photos >Preferences from the menu bar. (5) Click the General tab. (6) click the Use as System Photo Library button.

If you open second or different library in the Photos app, and you haven't designated it as the System Photo library, other applications will use photos from the original System Photo Library. You can have many Photo library's but just one can be the System Photo Library at a time. I hope this helps.

I struggled with this also. Here's what worked for me.

Open Photos. Go to Preferences. Click the button to "use as system folder". The next time I opened iTunes I chose Photos and all my albums and events.

thanks!!! Have been struggling with this problem for a month. Now the "select albums" button can be chosen and I can pick last 3 months to sync.

Awesome, so easy! would have never found that without your help.

Hi there,

I would like to do this as well as I keep my photo library on an external hard drive. But under preferences in photos the 'use as system folder' choice is greyed out so I cannot select it. Can you suggest anything to help please?

Thanks,

Lorrie

I have the same problem and 'use as system folder' is also grayed out! any ideas anyone?

hi. unfortuantely the 'use as system folder' option is also grayed out! any ideas?

The "Use as a system photo library" button is greyed out in my case too. any solution?

Brilliant. I've been trying to resolve this for months and despite visits to One-to-one sessions and Apple phone support I was told it was not possible. Thank you so much!!

L

Created an acct just to answer this:

To all of those with a greyed out "Use as a system photo library" button, what worked for me was to resize my iTunes window as big as possible and then I was finally able to select the "Sync Photos" button. It looks like a bug where everything appears greyed out, even when you have already selected to use Photos as the system library, but the issue was just that the window was too small to see the checkbox.

Apple needs to fix this interface. Having to resize the window to see the Sync Photos is just ridiculous. Thanks for the tip!

One of the keys to fixing this is that once you've followed the instructions above and the 'use as system folder' is selected and greyed out, YOU NEED TO QUIT ITUNES. It does not correctly change the folder over in iTunes until you quit and restart it.

Nope. I have Photos on full-screen, and "Use as System Photo Library" is still gray.

My Photos library location is Photos Library, I can't change it.

My iTunes Sync Photos has Pictures as the directory, and Photos Libby is grayed out. So, I can't tell one application where to find pictures to sync.

Maybe Apple should test their software before releasing it to the public.

I am getting sick of Apple stuff not working. Once upon a time everything "just worked", now it's so bloody complex you don't know if it's you, or a bug. This sort of crap never happened when Steve Jobs was alive, because someone would have copped it if they produced this half-baked rubbish.

I'm running iTunes 12.3.3.17 (even that "About" doesn't work because the version scrolls off the screen before you can note it down!) and Photos 1.5, on El Capitan 10.11.4 with my Photos library on a shared drive. I cannot select the photo library from iTunes because it is always greyed out .... and I've just about had enough of this Apple crap!

Thank you! That solved my problem immediately! 🙂