Photos app not syncing to iPhone and animated gifs don't work

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Photos app not syncing to iPhone and animated gifs don't work

I've had this problem for some time now that when I revise an album in Photos (and iPhoto before that) the change wont sync to my iPhone unless I quit both applications and restart them.

Not sure this is related but for probably the same amount of time animated gifs that I send out from my camera roll or a saved photos album don't animate.

They animate when people message them to me. They animate when I message them from dropbox. If I save one that animated when my friend sent it to me to my camera roll and then send it back out it no longer animates. If I save that same image to dropbox and send it out from there it works. I tried importing all the gifs that work in my dropbox to an album in photos and synced that to my phone and none of them work either. I know they don't animate when you view them in the photos app, I'm solely talking about sending them via message.

Any ideas what's going on here??

I'm running 10.10.4 on a 27" iMac. Was happening with my iPhone 5 for a while and just upgraded to a 6 thinking that might fix it but it didn't.

iPhone 6, iOS 8.4, 128 gb

Posted on Aug 1, 2015 6:03 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 6, 2015 10:06 AM in response to CameronLS

I've had the same problem and after much trial and error I found the following solution. While it is NOT ideal, until there is a fix it's the best way I've found.

First, you can't sync animated gifs via photos or iPhoto. As you've learned they just sync as flat images. What you need to do is text yourself with iMessage all of the animated gifs you want to use/keep. Keep in mind that you will need to save each one of them to your camera roll from the text you send so if you have a lot of them you may want to do it in groups.

Once you have the text, just tap and hold on the gif, and choose save. It will save to your camera roll. The next time you sync with photos make sure you choose NOT to delete the images and you are better off using iTunes to do the sync. When you open Photos with your phone attached, you can then select the other images you may have taken and want to import BUT DO NOT select any of the animaged gifs. Then if you want chose to delete the imported images from your phone during import and only the images you want to import will be deleted from your phone. Moving forward you will use your "camera roll" to select the animated gif. If you test it you will see that the animated gif does work now. But remember, not everyone's phone will display an animated gif. I've sent animated gifs to people with Windows phones and they don't see them as animated.

Hope this helps.

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