Photos app on iPhone not syncing in iOS 11

i updated to iTunes 12.7.5, and updated to iOS 11.4. After the updates, I synced my iPad. The majority, but not all, of my photos were copied. The next morning, I initiated a second sync. It appears that all 30,000 of my photos synced correctly after the second sync. I did not empty any cache or reset my iPad. I have not tried to sync my iPhone 8 yet. Hopefully this nightmare is over.

It has taken over 8 months to fix this sync problem....miracles have happened..synced my photos on iPad and iPhone after updating to iOS 11 and latest iTunes.

hHad to turn iCloud off and did normal sync via iTunes and USB connection and it has worked without a hitch!

I had handled my photos a different way while this was happening and had only stored around half my photos in Mac Photos albums. I will now put the rest into Photos albums and hope to sync them all to iPad and iPhone. As it worked today with half my collection, I think it will do the lot when I have put the others Back into photos.

ang

Finally IOS 11.4 has fixed this problem. All 35000+ photos on my iMac (in iPhoto because Photos is still a joke for anyone who really wants to organise their images) have synced to my iOS 11 devices. My older iPad, iPhone and iPod still running iOS 10 or earlier never had a problem.

What is surprising is that the release notes for iOS 11.4 do not acknowledge that this was ever an issue. It’s almost as if Apple finally realised that their sneaky plan to force everyone into paid cloud storage wasn’t going to work so they flicked the switch to make local syncing work again. Users 1 Corporation 0.

I updated to iTunes 12.7.5, and updated to iOS 11.4. After the updates, I synced my iPad. The majority, but not all, of my photos were copied. Later, I initiated a second sync. It appears that all 30,000 of my photos synced correctly after the second sync. I did not empty any cache or reset my iPad. I have not tried to sync my iPhone 8 yet. Hopefully this nightmare is over.

Ok, so for what it's worth.....This is the sequence that I used to get things seemingly working.

On my phone I quit Photos (as in double clicked the home button and swiped up on the Photo app to quit it).

On my iMac I quit iTunes (no glow under the desktop app)

On my iMac I opened Photos

On my iMac I opened iTunes (allowing iTunes to read the Photos Library?)

On my iMac I plugged in my iPhone which did a backup and then a sync.

On the first sync it copied another 65 pictures (weird). I added a photo to a couple of albums and sync'd again....they appeared in the albums. I then removed the photos from the albums and did another sync and they were gone. I did this while the sync cable was still attached and the Photo app was open as was iTunes app. I did it numerous times and I could add and remove. One thing that happened 3 times was iTunes just up and quit on me @#$%. So tonight it appears to be working but tomorrow is yet another day!

Well it appears now that after almost a year to the day they may have finally fixed the problem.....well done Apple. I just earlier today updated my iPhone to ios 12 and then started to do a sync with iTunes. It told me iTunes needed to be updated prior so I did. It did a backup and a sync, while it was still attached I did another sync where it added 4k plus of photos, then again while still attached I did another sync and it added another 3k plus photos. I did a few more without anymore pics being added and then looked at my iPhone and by dam they were all there (pictures and albums). I'm not going to hold my breath until I have disconnected and added another album or two to see what happens. I just wanted to share this with you to say it looks promising at this point anyway.

One thing that helped me with this is make sure your phone or iPad is not in low power mode. It won't sync if that is the case

Yesterday I sent a rather heated email to the Apple advisor that I have been working on with regards to the problem with the syncing of photos through iTunes and he rang me today to say that he had been off sick for a couple of days and he just wanted to ring to bring me up to date the situation as it stands at the moment.

I did say to him that I knew it’s wasn't his fault but as he was the only point of contact I had with Apple so he had to cop it…..

I pointed out that my 55,000+ music library syncs without a problem. I can sync my music in any number and configuration and it just works.

My advisor told me that Apple have asked all advisors to stop sending in logs and info regarding the problem of syncing photos as the have enough information. He said Apple are aware of the problem and even though it started at the time of the release of iOS 11 it is an iTunes related problem.

The problem is with the way iTunes is reading the information and accessing data from the photo libraries. Apple are definitely working on an update to iTunes to fix this problem together with a few other issues that have popped along the way.

My advisor has asked me to be patient as an update to iTunes will be released sooner rather than later, (he hopes) although Apple haven’t put a time frame on it. I was going to subscribe to iCloud for the syncing of my photos but I don’t fancy uploading 1.83GB of photos to the cloud. I guess I’ll wait a bit longer to see what happens….

I live in hope Gary Lowen

Hello all,

i had the same issue for several days, tried everything, nothing worked. But today I did the following with success - all photos and videos have been synchronized finally by folders albums.

step1 - in setting on device enable iCloud photo - this will erase all photos from your devise. Immediately disable iCloud photo and reboot device.

step 2 - open the latest version of iTunes. Check box for photo synchronizatio.

I had 12000 photo including 600 video. All are now in the devise in correct albums.

i don’t dare to do it again, will be waiting for global iOS and iTunes update.

This was my original post. It has worked for some and not worked for others, particularly those with iPads.

I've had this problem on my iPhone X and an iPhone 7 both running the latest iOS 11 and iTunes 12.7.

However, here's what I discovered to fix the problem today. I even did the same steps on my wife's iPhone7 and fixed it as well. The problem was that when I tried to sync just a couple of folders of pictures, the folders themselves would get set up on the iPhone, but no pictures would be in them.

At one point, I had synced my complete photo library which was about 29GB. After stopping the sync of photos, I started seeing clues that the sync never removed those files as it said it did. When I plugged my phone into the computer and opened iTunes, the space indicator still showed 29GB of photos at the bottom of iTunes, but on the phone in Photos/Albums, they were all gone. I had wondered how to delete all of the pictures in the special folders People & Places and couldn't find a way. When I would go into General/iPhone Storage, it showed 29GB of Photos. I don't routinely use iCloud, but went to Settings/Apple ID/iCloud and turned on Photos. the Phone then gave me a message that it would delete all of the local photos (29GB, 28,000 pictures) before starting iCloud backup. Well, that was the answer. I did have to turn it on and off a couple of times for it to delete all of the pictures. Going back to Photo Albums proved that all of those pictures were indeed gone. Last step, I synced two picture folders AND, they now have all of the photos in those two folders on the iPhone as they should be.

Hi All, Well even after today’s update 11.2.6 - ziltch!

My Apple Advisor trying very much to do the right thing sent me this email today which I have acted on with some ‘zip’ problems. We shall see.

Has nothing to do with APFS since this problem also occurs on my imac running Sierra and my mbpro when it ran Sierra. This issue is strictly an iOS 11 problem and it has been there since the first beta of iOS 11. I’ve used 3 different Mac computers, for different photo libraries, used both photos and aperture, different sync methods (usb cables and WiFi), spent countless hours on the phone with senior apple care techs and submitted a dozen logs or so, used 4 different iPads, submitted 7 iOS 11 beta bug reports. The results were identical with everything I’ve tried with the iPads. I have been told that Apple is working on it and that a fix is forth coming. How long that will take is anybody’s guess since I first reported this well before the iOS 11 release date back in September 2017.

The sync with iPhone seems to be less problematic than iPad. Although Logging out of my iCloud account and logging back in to fix a handoff issue had the nasty habit of turning on the sync entire library using iCloud (which was off before I logged out) which deletes all my albums but with photos still present on the device with no way to recover the albums unless you delete all photos as well while the sync entire library to iCloud is still on. With all photos wiped from the phone and having turned off sync entire library using iCloud, I was able to bring back all pics and albums. I can sync my entire library in one attempt to my iPhones although a partial sync has its own issues.

My biggest gripe is that the iPad required at least 20 syncs to get my 18,000 pics library on the device with all albums populated. I found for me the key was that as the sync cancelled or crashed, that it was best to wait till the iPad stabilized again and that the syncing photos count in the iPad photos app quit incrementing before another sync was attempted. Let it process the pics from the last sync as it were before trying again.

I am amazed that Apple, the media people, have let this go on as long as it has.

I have the same issue, I have around 18000 photos on my MacBook running Sierra 10.12.6, I have had trouble syncing the photos from my mac to my IPAD running os 11. syncing used to work before os11 just fine but now it doesnt. I use iTunes through usb to the IPAD. My photos are not in the 'photos' app they are held in separate folders in finder. I have found the only way to sync is to select syncing by adding each folder at a time, but folders that contain more than about 300 photos always fail and it takes a few attempts with a few more being added each time, i.e. a folder with 1000 photos usually takes 4 sync attempts. Sometimes the sync would just 'cancel' sometimes it would give an error message 'device error'. If I get the device error message I have to restart my MacBook before restarting the sync again. Its slow and painful but I have managed to now get all my photos back onto the IPAD after 6 and a half hours. The tech guy on the phone was helpful but seemed unaware that this is a wider issue hitting lots of users.

This is an issue that I have been battling since the very first beta came out on iOS 11 back in September of 2017. I have filed more bug reports than I can remember and spent countless hours on the phone with more people than I can remember and via other means to communicate this problem to Apple.

It appears that they have finally heard us. Just downloaded iOS 11.4 beta 2 and to my absolute astonishment and joy, I was able to fully sync my 248 albums and 18k pics without a crash, without the “cancelling sync”, without the iPad becoming totally unstable, without empty albums and with all my albums with the correct picture count in each. I had made many changes to my photo library on my Mac since my last sync and all changes were correctly reflected.

I spent over 18 hours waiting for a sync yesterday. Let it sit all. night and then some. Didn't mow the lawn or anything exciting like that, but did some LightRoom work and plugged away. Here are the steps I took and some questions at the end for those still on this topic.

1) turned on iCloud Photo Library - had iCloud Photo Sharing on already

2) Allowed the prompt to delete files from sync through iTunes

3) Turned off both iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Photo Sharing

4) Deleted cache folder on computer and em pried trash

5) rebooted phone and computer

6) let the full library of photos sync - did not add any videos or select specific albums

7) waited 18 hours for 69k photos to sync

ongoing questions for those trying to sort this out

a- can you sync again without all these extra steps?

b- has anyone selected albums rather than syncing all?

c- has anyone turned sharing of iCloud back on for shared albums, streaming or library?

Welcome any input as I currently have a million extra albums based on all the old photo events. It is nice to have pictures again for mobility, but I am hesitate to want to wait 18 hours for sync again since it has been since October 2017 since anything worked right.