Photos not syncing (iOS 9 / watchOS 2)

simonbuysellit wrote:

yes, absolutely. I wonder if it's the amount of photos in All Photos that causes the photo sync to misfire; did your father have many in there I wonder. This discussion and issue was passed to Apple engineers today I believe. (Had to restart my watch and phone yesterday when the watch stopped making calls). Grrrrr.

I honestly don't think that's it - although yes his photo collection is small (favourites had 25 ish & all photos had about 150ish), I still personally get this issue even if try switching between my 'favoutites' album (4 photos) & a different album with only 10 photos whilst completely staying away from my 'all photos' album.

Something else I've noticed is that in the 'Photos' section an the AW app on the phone, when the sync stops working, the displayed 'synced album' under 'photo syncing' does not change after the first failed sync, even if you select a different album.

I am having the same problem. Besides the hassle of downloading a 500MB file to make the 2.0 upgrade it has been frustrating and challenging to get this new version to work. Nothing I have tried as suggested in the above post do anything to fix the issue. It must be a bug. Apple please respond with a fix or update.

Hello everyone. The Apple support team I've been chatting to hoped 9.02 would improve it; I don't know about you but it's still not syncing All Photos still and freezes the sync when I try; requiring a restart of both devices (I've reported this). Also, anyone else have trouble with the iPhone screen orientation being at best slow but mostly not changing at all when adjusting the orientation? (it was fixed in 9.01 for me at least, but is back to unnormal again now! Grrrrr).

I created an album with just 3 pictures and it won't sync. 9.0.2 did nothing to fix this. so frustrating. I want to have a picture of my kids as my watch face!

Ten Days ago this worked for me.

Reset watch content and settings in watch app on phone (General>Reset>Erase Content and Settings) , and re-paired the watch after it reset.

All your settings and content will be exactly as you left it when you restore the watch.

If you're just looking to get the pictures on the watch and not necessarily diagnose the exact issue, I'd suggest that process. . My watch has been syncing as expected ever since. My guess is the way the watch is paired prior to upgrading the phone to iOS9. Or what the iOS9 upgrade does to the existing pairing. Either way, repairing the watch worked for me first try.

Just tried it and it's still not working. I'm going to try setting up as a new watch and see what happens.

Mine now IS working, but not necessarily because of the iOS upgrade.

The album I had been using ("Family") seemed to get somewhat frozen during one of (a) iOS upgrade to 9.x, (b) watchOS upgrade to 2.0, or (c) iPhone upgrade from 5s to 6s. By "frozen" I mean: (a) Watch did not sync with it anymore, and (b) My account lost the ability to manage the album, despite the fact that I created it.

My solution:

1. Create a new album.

2. Move all photos from old album to new album.

3. Change Watch to sync with the new album.

Now when I add photos to the new album, they do appear on the Watch.

I don't know why this problem happened, but at least I discovered a workaround (for me).

HHas this workwd with the All Photos album? If so, how many photos are in the folder? Thanks.

I know this isn't how it should work but I went to the Photo face, customized it, made it small with the bezel, and watched the photos from the selected album (slowly) sync. When I went back to the Photo Album face, it was synced.

Photo sync used to work fine for me using Sync folder of 'All Photos' and 500 photos which used to work perfectly with the last 500 photos syncing without issue.

Since the update its just a massive fail.

On the watch I just see a spinning wheel when I start the photo app, or just 500 grey tiles.

Very disappointing

So, I am late to this dialogue because I havent really focused on having photos on my AW - was waiting for the update that would let me fix a photo of my own to a watch face - have had the watch since end of April - seems to work fine - few issues along the way - until now (and with Dark Skies before 🙂) anyway, I synced my AW photos to favorites and had only 14 photos - they showed on my watched before any of the IOs AW or iPhone upgrades - as I said never really bother with them - but after I upgraded to IOs9 (and the updates or fixes!) and then to AW ios2, I wanted to create my own AW face and that is where I saw the synching issue.

Ive read through the chain - my details are the following:

1. 38mm upgraded to ios2 with iPhone 6 upgraded to ios9+.

2. Dont have "All Photos" just Camera Role - so must not have started iPhoto Library -

3. Have not unpaired my AW and iPhone for months - so not since the ios upgrade.

4. I was synced to "Favorites" but tried to resync to a different and "EMPTY folder newly created - hasnt helped - I continue to have the old 14 photos from the original Favorites folder (that folder I reduced to only 6 photos) no change either with the change in the Favorites folder or the new Empty folder. So, I think after reading this chain that my watch and iPhone are not synching at least with regard to photos.

5. IN AW Photos on the iPHone - I set it up both as customize and then as mirror phoen - no change - I have the number of photos permitted on the phone to be the least - currently 25 - and the size of the Empty file is 0 and the size of the Favorites is 5 pics as I said

Given the above, it cant be an issue with the number of photos being synced since I have so few -

I did have trouble upgrading to ios 2 - but waited a day and then was successful - my ios9+ upgrades went fine.

I am at a loss - and well not sure there is anyone suggestion from this chain that might help me - have you had any further word from APple support? or just forgo the photos - live with the ones that have taken up permanent residence on my AW and are totally NOT connected back to my iPhone (that seems just crazy) and hope that a subsequent ios update will fix this stuff?

This week I did a diagnostic log report with Apple. I'm really impressed with how they are pursuing the fault, even if it's taking a while I appreciate. Hopefully analysing this might give them a solution. Like you, I agree, the pairing and impairing, force restarting devices to get them to connect properly is tiresome.

lol. I haven't even gotten it to sync for a second since I upgraded .... I am hoping another ios fix will come a long i will keep watching this chain .. Ever hopeful.

Seems to be fixed in iOS 9.1. This is before updating to Watch OS 2.0.1 from 2.0, so it was an iOS issue after all.

Synced up to the 250 limit from the album All Photos, which has almost 10k photos.