Do People in the Photos app sync?

Are people in the Photos app supposed to sync between macOS and iOS? Is this a broken feature or not supported? Someone please tell me that Apple does not expect me to organize People over and over again on all my devices? That would be pretty ridiculous. I've never used the Faces feature in previous versions for that very reason.

Posted on Sep 22, 2016 10:52 AM

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55 replies

Sep 27, 2016 4:05 AM in response to Macsterguy

I have another sync issue with this new Photos app on iOS 10. After organizing People folders on my iPad (Adding, Merging, Selecing, Hiding, etc), I realized that after syncing my device with my Mac the iPad goes back to its initial selection of faces and does not keep your last reorganization. Same with the iPhone. I tried a couple of times and the issue remains.

Sep 27, 2016 4:35 AM in response to JCQMT

After organizing People folders on my iPad (Adding, Merging, Selecing, Hiding, etc), I realized that after syncing my device with my Mac the iPad goes back to its initial selection of faces and does not keep your last reorganization. Same with the iPhone. I tried a couple of times and the issue remains.

Are you using iTunes Photo Sync? Then with every sync all photos on the iPad will be replaced by the photos from the new sync. And you will have to start over with naming people.

Sep 27, 2016 9:01 AM in response to léonie

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.

Oct 1, 2016 6:07 AM in response to JCQMT

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.

Oct 1, 2016 6:17 AM in response to JCQMT

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.

Oct 20, 2016 12:10 AM in response to Colin Ayer

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.

Oct 25, 2016 12:52 PM in response to Joshua Garrett

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.

Oct 30, 2016 8:55 AM in response to Blackgrin

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!

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Do People in the Photos app sync?

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