Photo Changes Syncing Across Devices

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iuser1985 Author

Level 1

49 points

Photo Changes Syncing Across Devices

I had asked a question about my Photos library organization getting messed up, and am now in the process of reorganizing. But I had a couple more questions about Photos I don't quite understand.

When I make a bunch of changes to Photos on my Mac, it takes forever to show those album changes on all of my devices. How long does that typically take?

Also, if I updated all of the albums and moved photos around on my Mac how do I know syncing is going on? Do I need to leave Photos open for the syncing to continue?

Lastly, I have made changes to the Photos album on my Mac just now, at say 9:30am on 10/2/16. But when I exit Photos and go into my folder where the library is stored, it says the last change took place yesterday at 1:40pm. Shouldn't it say 9:30am on 10/2/16? Is there a way to save the album that I am not understanding?

Thank you.

iPad Air, iOS 10

Posted on Oct 2, 2016 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Oct 2, 2016 10:19 AM in response to iuser1985

For starters we need details - what version of the OS and of Photos are you using? What are your iCloud settings and status on all devices?

In generall Photos does not need to be open but no one can say for sure until we know exactly what you have and exactly what you are doing

LN

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Answer 2

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Oct 2, 2016 1:09 PM in response to iuser1985

Lastly, I have made changes to the Photos album on my Mac just now, at say 9:30am on 10/2/16. But when I exit Photos and go into my folder where the library is stored, it says the last change took place yesterday at 1:40pm. Shouldn't it say 9:30am on 10/2/16? Is there a way to save the album that I am not understanding?

I think this would require the knowledge of every single possible "change" to an item in the library database and what exact folder that changed file would be in.

There is no single folder in a photo library that you can monitor for time/date changes. It is a complex system.

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Answer 3

iuser1985 Author

Level 1

49 points

Oct 2, 2016 4:19 PM in response to LarryHN

Ok so I have more details and can pretty much pin the problem on my iPhone.

I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 10. I was having issues with my phone so I turned off the iCloud account on my phone that had my iPhotos library and turned it back on 10 minutes later. Something in doing that caused a glitch. Because after re-organizing most of my photo albums that got all scattered, I realized everything syncs fine across my Photos on my Mac and Photos on my iPad. But the iPhone has all these random albums and something doesn't seem right. So my goal was to turn off Photos on my iPhone and remove all photos. Problem is although the Cloud is completely disconnected, I can't seem to remove any of my photos unless I go through 1 by 1. Even when I try the trick of plugging the iPhone into my Mac and using the Image Capture tool, I can't see the photos on my phone. I was trying to figure a way to wipe the photos from my phone now without going through 1 by 1 or resetting all, so that way I can then go back and re-add Photos Cloud to my phone and re-download everything.

This is driving me nuts Apple.

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Answer 4

iuser1985 Author

Level 1

49 points

Oct 2, 2016 9:12 PM in response to iuser1985

I ended up deleting every photo from my iPhone. I first unsynced from the Cloud entirely, and went through and dragged through 18,000 photos and deleted everything and all albums. It was a pain, but I really didn't want to reformat my entire iPhone and start from scratch. Believe it or not I think it took less effort and time. Once I got all of the photos off of the phone I then resynced with the Cloud and now everything is synced on the Cloud across my Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

Lesson I learned is if you ever turn off Cloud on your iPhone, be sure to completely delete all of your photos from your phone before you resync with the cloud. If there are a bunch of photos on the iPhone and you resync with your Cloud it could duplicate and mess up your photos and albums. Also backup per the advice some have given by downloading all pictures to your Mac and then do a Time Machine backup.

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