Photos app on iPhone not syncing in iOS 11

Yours is my experience as well, going back to September. And to be clear, in my case (and I believe yours) I have for 10 years synced my 15,000+ digital images on my MacBook Pro to my iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) using iTunes and not iCloud. there are two strains in this thread, and many newer participants do not make this distinction. As this has been going on for four months, I have concluded that this is no accidental or a bug but a decision to support iCloud sync only. I may be wrong, but until they make the fix it makes no difference. I am surprised that the bloggers and better sites like CNET, Verge, the WSJ, NYT, and Pougue have not picked up on this. I have written to them all but not heard back except from one of the better Apple YouTube bloggers who suggested that it seemed to him an intentional strategy by Apple. I recommend that everyone with this issue (and there must be thousands of us) write directly to the thought leaders and bloggers and try to get this issue more generally understood. Negative reports or press should at least get a reaction from Apple. My family (all Apple-istas) is not buying any more Apple products including upgrades from iPhone 6 vintage phones and iPads and MacBook computers until Apple addresses this issue. I needed to upgrade, and have already migrated to the Note 8 and a SurfaceBook PC, and moved all my Adobe Creative Suite programs to the pc, and frankly everything works easily with no stress. Hopefully we are a statistic, because if there are enough of us it may become material to Apple.

tijc, again, this is exactly what I am seeing. The difference with me is I am using a MacBook pro instead of pc which again totally helps point the issue to iOS 11.x.x. I have not had problems with the iPhone 8s either and to my surprise not on a reset iPhone 6 running iOS 11.1.2 as well. The brand new iPad 9.7 I just purchased at Costco had the same nightmarish photo sync issue my other iPads have had. I eventually get them loaded over USB but it is not my intention to have to spoon feed the device over the course of hours or days with multiple syncs.

Only other clue that makes any sense is what an Apple ‘Genius’ mentioned in an Apple store, namely that although it’s all IOS 11, it’s different coding for iPad and iPhone (obvious really, when you think about it - different keyboards etc), which seems to bear out that this problem only seems to affect iPads running IOS 11, and not iPhones. (Haven’t actually read back through every post to this thread, so no doubt someone will pop up and correct me there!!) Either way, doesn’t help us get it sorted, but thought I’d mention it!

Here's how I see it: Newer iPhones (8 and X) are OK, old iPads are OK.

Old but supported iPhones such as the 6, you are screwed. Newer iPads, you are probably screwed. Did someone say that the reset to factory on an iPhone 6 worked? Not a viable solution for most people.

This affects millions of users, yet the only place we hear about it is here and a few other support sites.

I am having trouble with a brand new iPad I bought in sept 2016. This is the model prior to the current 10.5. It is just a year old and I bought Apple care plus. So they either fix the problem or give me a brand new model iPad.

I totally agree with the thoughts that the issue of photos not syncing between Mac and devices via iTunes is an intentional move by Apple to promote use of iCloud.

As I said in this forum several weeks ago, there is a hidden agenda here by Apple. Given that a new photos was introduced With 11.3 High Sierra, why did they bother if they were not going to support it? I find it very disappointing that they ruined the sync feature in the process.

i am now using other means to have my photos sync and it is no thanks to Apple.

i believe we are flogging a dead horse trying to get this resolved and that is why my consultant at Apple support no longer communicates with me.

ang

It may affect several people, but I do believe the "this affects millions" is highly doubtful - as I seriously doubt that a million users of the Apple ecosystem set up and use access to tens of thousands of their own photos on all their devices.

And no, I am not trying to discount how big of a problem this is for you - as it obviously is. And I do hope that the solution is forthcoming. IT simply does not fit the normal Apple methodology to totally fry such a useful feature, only on certain (and illogical) hardware/OS combinations. I suspect there is something different at work... not to sound flippant -but a "glitch" that maybe Apple really has been unable to figure out (maybe it isn't as repeatable for them to analyze and fix?).

Either way - I hope it gets worked out for you all. In the meantime - i'm going to try to set it up to access my entire photo library on my iPhone and iPad Pro... if I can find the instructions for that.

H agree with you. No doubt there are issues, but if it was broken on purpose like some are saying then it wouldn’t work for anyone. It obviously does work for many people, but it seems more frustrating for those with many photos.

I took 100 photos on my iPhone yesterday. Just testing IOS 11.2 out. All were transferred to my iPad within 2 hours. I repeated the test using my iPad Pro to take 100 photos, and they took about 3 hours to fully transfer to my phone, with the last 7 taking about an hour.

During this time Google photos took less than 30mins each time.

I cant imagine how long 1000’s would take, and i can imagine there could be all sorts of issues over that time.

I have a common setup: Windows PC, Apple iPhone. On my Windows PC I have at least 11,000 photos. I know many iPhone users who have ten thousand photos on their phone, but not yet on a desktop. Someday they will want to archive / organize.

I now cannot sync any photos to the iPhone, where the Photo App is stuck with a message that it is trying to sync 11,000 photos that was only reset when I install a new IOS. New sync attempts do not reset this number. Smaller sync attempts do not reset this number which is an indicator of a stuck and flawed process that only Apple can address.

Dead in the water. Many people have or will have 11,000 photos on their PC.

Apple is not setting any expectation that this is important or being addressed.

Christian... I just spent two hours on the phone with support last night. They saw the problem. The syncs were crashing and I was getting the internal error message. I tried it in safe mode on the Mac. I even tried restoring the iPad and setting it up from scratch. It still couldn’t sync the photos. They had me run a program that monitors my computer. I sent them that data. They are supposed to get back to me in a couple days. By any chance, do you mind sharing your ticket number? I would love to share that with the support guy that is helping me out.

I did a similar thing way back in October after many hours on the phone with Apple consultant. They had loads of file from my Mac and said the engineers would be given this data. Eventually, I heard no more from the consultant in spite of having direct email contact...my case is still unresolved after 2 months of waiting for the promised upgrade to solve the problem.

How many people have done the same thing is unknown but reading messages in this forum ,there are very many.

you can share my Case. Case number is 100331783091.

i’ve Almost given up on ever seeing a solution.

ang

I just did what you did last Monday and had a profile installed on my mini 4. The consultant was logged into my mbpro so he could watch the cancelling sync issue and me having to restart the sync and seeing the cannot start sync error and even tried safe mode. Got the data submitted. Have another open case for my iPad Pro as well. Here is the iPad mini 4 care number.

Case Number:

100368343575

My case is still open with Apple after about 2 1/2 months. I have 57,819 photos in Photos on my MacBook Air, all in many, many purpose made albums got ng back many years, all syncing perfectly via usb and iTunes prior to iOS 11.

iOS 11.2 latest sync still fails to populate my photo albums on my iPhone 6, All of which are empty (0 from my Mac)

Latest email reply from consultant yesterday :

At least your consultant is still talking.

please keep the pressure up as mine has long ago stopped communicating.

The engineers obviously do not consider this issue of any importance...2 or more months on and no answer... nor promised update to fix the issue.

Bad customer relations on Apple’s part.

For a platform that prided itself on it’s graphics capabilities, it has sadly failed to meet expectations in this case.

why revamp Photos in High Sierra when we can’t use it properly?

Totally disappointed

Ang

I’ll be fascinated to hear if you hear anything much back from Apple. I started with on-line chat, which solved nothing, then moved to phone support, where I spoke to a ‘Senior Engineer’ who, as with many others it seems, established a link to my PC to observe exactly what was happening, talked me through a factory reset to try a sync on a ‘new’ device (to no avail), then told me it would be escalated to Apple engineers, and sent me an email with a direct phone number for further contact. Since then I have sent emails detailing further attempts to sync, with many extra details, I have phoned the direct number given (always on voice mail with a message that he will get back to me on his next day at work) and I have left messages asking to be called back. Needless to say, I have heard nothing at all back either by email or phone!! If anyone is interested, the case number is 100349263491, and the consultant was a Daniel Oliviera.