Albums in Photos not showing up on iPhone

iTunes is not synching ANY of the albums I have in Photos on my Mac to Photos on my iPhone. Even if the albums are at the top level.

In iTunes, I have chosen the Photos app and selected the two albums that I would like to sync to my iPhone. When I Sync, iTunes then copies the photos from the selected albums to my iPhone, but not the Albums, so the photos are scattered amongst the albums that Apple has created (People, Places, Videos, Selfies....)

I tested again with my iPad.

On my Mac I am using Photos 2.0 and iTunes 12.6.

I selected 20 albums in iTunes from Photos on my Mac. The albums were inside folders. I also selected a few Faces albums.

All 20 albums appeared on the iPad as separate albums. The only problem is, that all People albums synced, not only the albums I selected.

LarryHN, you are wrong, I have limited bandwidth since I travel full time and have to rely upon my Verizon HotSpot. I had the same issue as Aaaaaack on my iPhone 6 Plus and iPAD Pro 9.7 as well as other apple devices. I was using an External HD syncing was never right, so I decided to use Photos (only for the syncing, nothing else) I ran into the issue we are discussing. What I did was to 1) unsync all my photos and have them removed from my device and backed up my device, 2) I then closed iTunes. 3) I reconnected my device and let the backup complete, I then clicked “all albums” for one device or “selected the albums for another device” (noticed I did not click “All photos and Albums” (this might work now that I have resolved how to do the sync). I let the the sync happen, 4) I then disconnected and closed iTunes. I found no albums but all the photos. 5) I then shut down my device. 6) I then reconnected my device and let the backup and sync happen. for the device with “all albums checked” the albums showed up. For the one where I only checked certain albums, the albums were not there, so I checked another album to be added, applied and synced and the Albums showed up. SO the real answer IS YES you can get what you want through iTune without going through iCloud. There seems to be an issue with the sync process for me at least ( I am running iTunes 12.6.1.25 on an iMAC running 10.12.5 and my devices are on iOS 10.3.1)

What I did was to 1) unsync all my photos and have them removed from my device and backed up my device, 2) I then closed iTunes. 3) I reconnected my device and let the backup complete, I then clicked “all albums” for one device or “selected the albums for another device” (noticed I did not click “All photos and Albums” (this might work now that I have resolved how to do the sync). I let the the sync happen, 4) I then disconnected and closed iTunes. I found no albums but all the photos. 5) I then shut down my device. 6) I then reconnected my device and let the backup and sync happen. for the device with “all albums checked” the albums showed up. For the one where I only checked certain albums, the albums were not there, so I checked another album to be added, applied and synced and the Albums showed up. SO the real answer IS YES you can get what you want through iTune without going through iCloud.

It looks like we now have random results instead of a reliable syncing procedure. Since I upgraded to iOS 10.3.2 on the iPhone I could not sync any of my albums once to the iPhone using iTunes Photo Sync. I need to sync select albums, because my Photos Library is too large for the iPhone with only 64GB. There is no problem to sync selected smart albums and faces albums to my iOS 9 iPad.

Leonie, WOW, I am glad I have not upgraded to 10.3.2 yet and won’t until this issue is fixed. Now I have a question if the issue only with iPhones? Do you have 10.3.2 on your iPAD? Appreciate the heads up - Mike

So it could be your synced photos and folder structures are really there; you just can't see them. I have no idea why Apple made this change. But with the upcoming iOS 11 and the new Files tool, it might change again.

It is broken since iOS 10.3 😠

The same Photos Library synced with iTunes will sync perfectly to my iPad 3 with iOS9.3.5, but when I sync with the iPhone with iOS 10.3.2 with iTunes Photo Sync, the results are random.

I have 10.3.1 and I get the photos, so the issue is with 10.3.2. Hopefully they fix it with further iOS releases. Will not upgrade until this is fixed or if not, will consider another avenue. Having to search for a particular albums is not a good thing when you are searching for an album that I might not remember the exact date of the album (all my albums have the date of the photos (yymmdd) as the beginning of the name)

No need to use iCloud !!! (You should not have to if you don't want to)

I had the same problem, photo albums not showing on iPhone 7 (iOS 10.3.2, iTunes 12.6.1). I saw this trick somewhere and it worked for me; Marking "Selected albums", I just add another one on the selection, synchronize and then they all appeared. Ta-da ! (Until the next "update")

If I type the name of the Album (i.e,, "Family"), then that Album indeed shows up. So it could be your synced photos and folder structures are really there; you just can't see them.

Thanks for this tip - it's useful. But now I've discovered that actually only some of the photos from those albums have synced; roughly half of the photos, I suppose.

I hope this is considered a bug and it'll get fixed. I use a clock app that I need to choose photos for, and I've always chosen from albums before. If I can no longer access albums easily, that app's going to be a lot more complicated to use.

Has Apple fixed the issue with photo syncing. I will not update to iOS 10.3.2 until this issue is fixed. Having my albums avail after a sync from my iMAC using iTunes to my iPhones and iPADs is critical to my business. Having albums makes it easier to find the photos I want to find.

Hi, I'm not sire if your problem has already been solved. But i'd like to try and suggest a solution, just in case.

If you put in many subfolders in the source folder of your photos in itunes, it won't be able to display all of it in your phone. The images are copied to your device but the album won't appear on "photos".

Try sorting them in separate folders under the source folder itself and avoid adding subfolders. That worked for me.

Rob_Earth

Are you running iOS 10.3.2, MacOS 12.10.5 and iTunes 12.6.2.20? Do you get all your albums? Also where are you syncing from - Photo? or an external HD?

I have all my photos in single folders without any subfolders, so should not have an issue. I am running 10.3.1 and will not update to 10.3.2 or higher until I see that the issue has been fixed by apple. I need my albums and I don’t need to hunt for them.

Thanks for the info, will keep watch on how this is going for you, hope you are able to get your albums

Mike

I still don't see the Albums appearing on my iPhone with iOS 10.3.3. The correct photos seem to be there, but the albums themselves don't appear as categories.

I haven't tried syncing with my iPad because that's still got all the albums, so I guess I'll just keep that photo library un-updated for a while.

have you updated iTunes to latest version 12.6.2.20? I updated my wife's iPhone 6 to 10.3.3 and since she has other issues I restored it to factory setting, restored the latest back up which included all our photos, I have clicked "all photos and albums" in iTunes. RESULT - all photos and albums are there

Yes, I'd updated to 12.6.2.20 before the latest sync, and the albums still don't appear on my iPhone. As I said before, that's after just one sync, and I've found that repeated syncs can yield dramatically different results. But right now at least all the photos I want seem to be on the iPhone, which is a pretty good result on the roulette wheel that is iTunes/iPhone syncing, so I'm probably not going to try again for a while. (On my iPhone the absence of albums isn't a big deal because I basically only sync favorites; on my iPad, where I sync far far more, it would be a big deal, and that's why I haven't done a photo sync to that for a while - and will continue not to do so.)

Oh, another thing for my experience: the albums I'm syncing aren't top-level in my Photos library on my iMac: they're both nested inside first-level folders. Léonie mentioned earlier that nested albums don't appear, although I'm not sure if mine are nested "enough" for that to be an issue. (They certainly appeared until quite recently, and are still present on my unsynced-in-a-while iPad.) Anyway, possibly top-level albums are now appearing, but second- and further level albums aren't appearing.