Do People in the Photos app sync?

This is indeed what I am doing (selecting "All photos and album") but what am I supposed to do if I don't want to go through iCloud? Also it is not really a new sync as I did not upload any new photos on my Mac between the various synchronization but it is still "disorganizing" the Photos app on the iPad each time. And the menu bar is not showing any photos being uploaded during the sync with the iPad (as none are new). I uploaded Sierra on my Mac thinking that it will solve the problem but it didn't.

I have the same problem. Every time I sync my iPhone 6S (ios10) to add new photos from my Mac all the identities of the people which I have inputted from my phone in "People Album" are lost. The scanning starts all over again undoing my input. The sync is also struggling to copy images from my phone to my Mac, sometimes it does it sometimes it doesnt.

This is indeed what I am doing (selecting "All photos and album") but what am I supposed to do if I don't want to go through iCloud?

Even iCloud does not sync the named people. The only advantage of iCloud Photo Library would be, that the previously synced photos would not be erased from the iPhone. Naming people on the iPhone is a waste of time, if you are using iTunes Photo sync.

So it would seem, but like a game of patience it whiles a happy hour !

Lutge wrote:

So it would seem, but like a game of patience it whiles a happy hour !

😁 I have done so myself, it is more fun than a crossword puzzle, but the next iTunes sync will spoil the fun.

Wow! That's an incredible omission. Faces does seem to work much better now, but to have separate meta data on different devices with the same Apple ID is just nuts.

but to have separate meta data on different devices with the same Apple ID is just nuts.

It is bad practice - good software engineering would avoid unnecessary redundancy and not force people to enter the same data over and over again. We are creating inconsistent faces databases this way on the different devices.

I am sure, Apple wanted to implement a syncing of people across devices, because of the traces in the user guide for iOS. So I suspect it is a legal problem (privacy) and and not a technical problem.

It's ridiculous that it doesn't sync across iCloud Photo Library! It takes so long to manually set up all the faces, I don't want to have to do it for all my devices!!! I def won't be using this feature until cloud sync is active!

I guess if you have to reset you phone or get a new one you have to do it all over again too!

Terrible user experience. Apple needs to fix this.

I guess if you have to reset you phone or get a new one you have to do it all over again too!

If you are using iCloud Photo Library, yes. Because iCloud Photos are not part of the device backup.

Also, if you are syncing the photos with iTunes. After every sync you have to label the faces aagin.

So in the release notes for iOS 10.1 is says that, "People names in the Photos app are saved in iCloud backups". I update my phone and iPad yesterday and let then both run an iCloud backup. This morning I am still noticing that I have different people grouping in the photo app on each device. Has anyone gotten this to work?

Blackgrin wrote:

So in the release notes for iOS 10.1 is says that, "People names in the Photos app are saved in iCloud backups". I update my phone and iPad yesterday and let then both run an iCloud backup. This morning I am still noticing that I have different people grouping in the photo app on each device. Has anyone gotten this to work?

Apple updated the iPhone User Guide for iOS 10 "http://help.apple.com/iphone/10/#/iph9c7ee918c", and it now staying clearly - just like for macOS 10.12:

Note: People identified in the People album aren’t synced across devices. The People feature isn’t available on iPhone 5.

I have been hoping they would fix th software to match the documentation, not the other way round!

I completely agree. I've spent hours in Photos on the Mac to get People merged only to find out none of that sync's to any of the other devices.

A complete waste of time.

So if people do not sync across devices does anybody understand what the change in 10.1 was that says people names in the photos app are now saved to iCloud backups?

You mean in the iOS 10.1 release notes? https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1893?locale=en_US

OS 10.1

This update includes Portrait Camera for iPhone 7 Plus (beta), transit directions for Japan, stability improvements and bug fixes.

Camera and Photos

• Introduces Portrait Camera for iPhone 7 Plus that creates a depth effect that keeps your subject sharp while creating a beautifully blurred background (beta)
• People names in the Photos app are saved in iCloud backups
• Improved the display of wide color gamut photos in the grid views of the Photos app
• Fixes an issue where opening the Camera app would show a blurred or flashing screen for some users
• Fixes an issue that caused Photos to quit for some users when turning on iCloud Photo Library

This means that Apple fixed a bug: previously, the iCloud backup of your iPhone or iPad did not include the Peoples names from your Photos Library. This means, if you restored your iPhone from an iCloud backup of the device, the peoples names would be missing. This is now fixed. You can restore the device from the backupp and the named faces will still be there. But that does not mean, that the people names will upload to iCloud Photo Library and sync to other devices.

Yep that's exactly what I was talking about. Thanks for clarifying I understand now. I think I somehow thought that the iCloud back up would somehow have some syncing functionality associated with it.