Photos app on iPhone not syncing in iOS 11

Seriously, this is so bad! 😠 using 11.2.6 $$$$$ iPhone 8 256GB / 133.21GB available hooked up to a brand spanking new $$$$$ iMac Pro 2017 3 GHz Intel Xeon W 64 GB 2666 MHz DDR4 Radeon Pro Vega 64 16 GB using iTune 12.7.3.46 and several other things that are default included - ACELP; 1 Click G-Force; MPEG Layer 3; Gracenote; Dolby; The Audible - apparently all Apple "Partners." I just tried a a couple syncs and nothing came through. Weird for me to see that there are like 20,328 photos and 456 videos in moments and roughly 10,000 in default albums (slo-mo Panorama, Time-lapes, places, Selfies, Videos. Live Photos, Camera Roll, and People).

Would Apple really abandon this problem? Find a workaround? Offer a solution amendable to those affected? I still don't get why just the voices here are affected. Something we all have in common. Maybe we could do a survey to discover that commonality. What if it were using RAW files from a Pentax camera? Or, file sizes over 74.9 MB? Or, over 1,017 photos in any Album? Or a badly name file convention from the conversions of older Apple formats? A file name given by iPhones or iPads? Maybe a file path is too long? We just don't know...

Considering how much we have all paid to have these features and be denied - that wreaks of need for serious attention ASAP. As I have mentioned before, I'm using LightRoom now and finding it a lot better, although all my time spent formulating, organizing and developing albums for clients, social media, galleries, projects, and even recreational imagery - all of it compromised time currently and now we need to reconsider the serious objectives at hand if Apple can't get it fixed. I really don't have the time to reinvent thousands of hours of Photos or prior iPhoto Events that all ended up a merged mess after the last migration.

My hands are in the air, palms up at chest height 😮 questioning this lack of responsiveness, irresponsibility and unreliability. For now, I am stuck with my own workarounds. Hope y'all fare well in this situation.

interesting thing happened. i can now successfully delete any photo in my synced folders, and they are deleted from the device. but adding folders and photos is still not happening. and it doesnt even give me an error. it syncs like everything is fine, but nothing shows up on the device.

I have been emailing my senior adviser and the last couple months im not getting any replies, whereas before they were very attentive.

apple is so bad on so many levels, software malfunction, bad customer service.

and switching to another device isnt convenient either, since everything i have is an apple product, from computers to tv, and the worst part is all my accounts, apps, media, I would have to be transferring to another platform, which means i need to do all that again since iOS and ANDROID dont really talk to each other. and i have been growing roots in apple products and iOS for 10 years now.

p.s. before i wrote this here, i emailed my senior adviser, complaining (his last email asked me what would be a good time for him to call, i emailed him a couple of times after that and no one got back to me). after i emailed him i started to write here, and just now i got a call from apple, i thought it was the rep calling be ASAP, i picked up the phone and an automated voice told me, that its not office hours so call back... even their calling service is all messed up.

I share everyone's frustration. Several weeks ago I bit the bullet and bought 2GB of iCloud storage space. After a week, all my photo were uploaded (except for a handful that were "Unable to upload"). However, on my iDevices, I had several blank folders. People, and places were two ones I use a lot. Going to iCloud on the web, I see the online version of iCloud does not have these folders in its directory. That explains the blank folders on my devices but these directories are important to me. I am so frustrated with Apple. They have taken a great product and environment and destroyed it.

Well, I did the update to the phone to 11.3 and still no love. I was hesitant to waste my time after importing pictures to organize them in albums under the false belief Apple software would work. I did a back up - first in a month, just as a prepared step thinking regular syncing of photos is a problem still and it was -thanks for nada Apple. There is currently a giant worm eating the core of Apple and its left nothing but brown mush apparently. I'm sick of wasting time on this. How patient must we be. This is closing in on a year of failure to fix a problem. Wow wow wow wowowowowowowowow

I did a reset on an "old" iPad Air and then set it up as a NEW iPad (NOT restoring from a backup in iTunes).

When I attempted to sync the photos, it failed with the "internal device error" message. I did turn off all the iCloud items in "settings" before syncing with iTunes - it just doesn't work. As a long-time "Apple fan" and user, I am very disappointed that Apple has done nothing to address this issues. I'm sure a multi-BILLION dollar corporation such as Apple has the resources to solve an issue as "small" as this one. Apple is abandoning wireless network devices (Airport). Perhaps iTunes sync will soon be history as well? SAD!

I agree that this problem has been going on for far too long, but the synching of photos from Mac to an iPhone or iPad via a cable using iTunes is not the only problem; some devices will not synch properly using iCloud either.

In our household I have a Mac and my wife has a Mac. Neither of us use iCloud for photos. We have two identical iPhone 7s which both synch all the photos from iTunes very happily from our respective Macs via iTunes using a USB cable.

My iPad Pro synchs correctly from my Mac via iTunes using a USB cable, but my 9.7" iPad will not. My wife's iPad mini will not synch correctly via iTunes using a USB cable with her Mac. I all cases the Macs and i-devices are fully updated.

In both cases the problem started with the arrival of iOS11 and the accompanying version of iTunes.

Apple broke this and it needs to be fixed, so:

PLEASE KEEP REPORTING THIS PROBLEM TO APPLE

on both the Photos and iTunes feedback pages

The more times we do this, the more it will help to raise Apple's awareness of how strongly people feel about it. Please spend a few minutes to report the problem on the feedback pages for both applications:

Photos for iOS - Feedback - Apple

and

Feedback - iTunes - Apple

"you first have to turn on iCloud photo library to delete all your iPad photos, ghost folders, and the residual "syncing...." message at the bottom of the albums window view. After iCloud photo library completes the turn on process, wait a moment and turn it back off"

I have always had iCloud photo library OFF, and I have always synced selected iPhoto/Photos albums/events.

When this problem started I synced from empty folders to clear the iPad's ghost photos, empty ghost albums, and the stalled "Syncing...".

But IF iOS 11.4 fixes this, I'll surely switch iCloud photo library ON/OFF even if I'm not sure whether that voodoo is really necessary. BTW, by chance I learned that switching the iPad to backup to iCloud (instead of the Mac) bypassed the LONG sync-to-Mac phase when I re-re-synced photos to the iPad when troubleshooting this.

When I first experienced this sync problem I thought that it was my old iPhoto library that was finally starting to really go unsupported. IF this is fixed, I hope I can still use iPhoto which I prefer for various reasons (iPhoto automatically creates albums so I can delete and re-import image folders in progress without needing to remember to manually create albums after each new import in Photos. iPhoto displays file names with no need to resort to clumsy scripts to display them in Photos.). But I am ready to switch to Photos, if necessary.

That appears to be a different problem/bug then the sync cancelling internal device error bug others including myself have encountered. At least this is what senior advisors have told me. You might want to get with Apple care to try to resolve that one. I know they have had me delete the iPod photo cach folder and do a “repair” on the photos library with mixed results.

My parents got us an Apple ][+ in 1981 and we've been using Apple stuff since (Mac 128k on up). This has been extremely frustrating too. That last update did allow at least several successful syncs for us (with in the 35k range of photos). I haven't tried adding more albums to sync but have added additional photos and they did sync.

I will give that a try sometime this week if I can get the time to try it.

To recap, we'd been having trouble with the iPad Pro 9.7" syncing, and some of the other ones. The iPhone X starting in February, but 11.4 did fix it for at least the first few syncs.

Now I am concerned that it could return! That would be a nightmare.

Back in June:

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. However, when I added new albums, the photos did not copy.

Today:

I updated to the latest iTunes and iOS 11.4.1. I did not empty any cache or reset my iPad. My new albums were added, but they were empty. So, nothing is fixed for me! Haven’t tried my iPhone 8 yet.

Hello Sunshine4a, ditto mine was exactly as you stated above but I did empty my iPod Photo Cache. Was emptying the cache necessary, don't know but I did it. So on to todays adventures.....more to my post above. After it added the 9500 more photos the new ones I had added to albums were there (positive). So I did another sync but removed them from the album and marvellously they were gone. Next I moved the pictures to another album and re-sync'd....they were moved to that album (even more positive). Next I took them out of the album and re-sync'd and the blood things were still there 😟 Ok so I thought we are still buggered. BTW I do all this between cutting the lawn etc. I try another couple of things because it sorta worked for me before. I restarted my iPhone 6 Plus and quit iTunes completely, then restarted iTunes (so it could look at Photos again?) I then reinitiated another sync and it added another 1900 pictures and when it was completely done the ones I had perviously removed from Photos were now gone from the iPhone. So what does all this mean? At this point for me 11.4 did not fix my issue but 11.41 seems promising. I am thinking that restarting things so they can have a fresh look at caches etc may help (specifically iTunes). After I do more chores I will try adding and removing pictures and make notes as to what I did if they appear on the phone or not.

Well, yes and no. IF I set up the iTunes photo sync to "sync ALL photos, videos, albums, etc.) (the default), then YES - new pictures that are added to Photos on my Mac ARE showing up on iOS devices.

If I selected "sync selected albums" in iTunes sync then NO - new pictures are NOT being added.

I do not like to use the "sync all" as that then gives me a HUGE number of "albums" (in albums view on iOS device) that I have to scroll through to get to my REAL albums. I am not sure why these extra "albums" with date titles, roll titles, event titles, etc. are even there when they are NOT "albums" in Photos on the Mac.

SO - Photos/iTunes sync is fixed IF you elect to sync ALL and not just selected albums.

At least, that how it appears to me as of this moment in time!

I could back up my devices in iOS 11, and complete a sync. However, my photos were not copying over correctly. I think it is an iTunes 12.9 issue, so I’m hoping that the Apple representative can help me with the problem so that I can complete a sync to see if my photo issue is resolved.

Try this....

1-In your Pictures folder right click the 'Photos Library' choose 'Show Package Contents' and delete the 'iPod Photo Cache'. Prior to doing this be sure Photos and iTunes are quit. Empty trash and restart the computer.

2-On the iOS device, turn iCloud photo sync ON.

3-Say “okay” to erasing all photos on iOS device.

4-Turn iCloud photo sync OFF.

5-Give iOS device a few hours to erase all photos.

6-Sync with iTunes and be sure “photos” sync is on and select all or selected albums.

Good luck, this worked for me and still is (using an iPhone 6Plus). Doing this seemed to allow me to start on a clean slate. Also, when the iPhone is still attached to the computer hit sync a number of times. I re-attached the phone numerous times over a few days and photos continued to populate until they were all there. BTW, when the sync icon is still spinning on the phone (top left) don't disconnect it until it's completely finished.