Photos app on iPhone not syncing in iOS 11

I'm not a software engineer, ... the following is my best guess only:

I think it has to do with the new file system that's rolled out with iOS 11, and the new photo formats now being supported by the operating system. The photos in the old photo/file system have to be re-interpreted or re-categoried in this new iOS, and I suspect, this is why upgraded devices seem to have some difficulty in adapting to the change. We haven't heard much from users of new fresh-out-of-box iOS devices like the 8 or the X. Those devices never had iOS 10.x or earlier.

I can only agree . . . Using latest versions of iTunes, Photos and syncing via Apple usb lightning cable I still can’t transfer the contents of my 100 or so separate albums to my iPhone. (Around 57,605 Photos) All these albums perfectly, neatly and precisely named and populated on my MacBook Air in Photos show as empty ‘0 from my Mac’ on my iPhone 6 running iOS 11.1

This has been an issue since upgrading to iOS 11.

I do not use iCloud to store my photos.

iTunes distinctly allows you to ‘Sync only selected albums’ which I have always selected and which always worked in iOS 10.

So please Apple - do something to address this bug as I am pessimistic that there will be a friendly fix in iOS 11.2

It’s about time Apple admitted there is a major problem rather than seeding more Emojies!!

Thanks to all the contributors over nearly the past 2 months - from 18 September 2017.

Thanks

Given the number of people with the same issue on this group, we should continue to maintain pressure on Apple to fix the problem.

Each of us cannot properly sync Mac Photos across iPads or iPhones without an issue. At best I can get about 200 files to sync before it crashes and I then have to go through the whole procedure again. An absolute waste of time and extremely frustrating to say the least.

I wonder if there is a hidden agenda .. and they are trying to force Apple users to use the icloud to store synced images??

I will be emailing my Apple consultant assigned to my case again on Monday and once again try and get some response.

Regards

Ange

Let’s be very clear about this.

In the ‘Photos’ syncing section the latest iTunes update still states clearly ‘sync selected albums’ as a menu item choice. The latest Photos application in the latest High Sierra allows ‘Separate Folders’ to be made to house variously categorised ‘Photo Albums’ specially created by the user. The Apple made albums are created by date, memory, face recognition etc.

So my point is . . . There still is a clear choice given to the user as to how syncing is to take place. Eg : Via direct usb cable or WiFi from Mac to iPhone with clear selections available or by iCloud over Wifi.

In my case I can still perfectly sync, music, podcast, ebooks, videos but not the 100’s of Photo albums I made (which were syncing without problems in iOS 10)

These albums appear as Titled but with no content on my iPhone under the iOS 11 - 11.1 system. All synced photos are actually there in ‘Collections’ in date order but that is no good to me when I have different categories and headings for my 57,605 photos.

I think it is about time we had a clear, concise explanation and solution from Apple.

Exactly what I went through. Apple sent me a replacement iPad Pro 9.7 due to this issue and not only that, but the photos it did sync were not even in the proper albums with the old iPad. Also had constant internal device errors which prompted them to swap out my iPad. So my replacement came with 10.3.3 installed. Great, I had a recent backup using 10.3.3 to which I restored the new ipad with. All 17,667 pics and 102 videos synced perfectly and in one attempt. I then updated to 11.1 and all was still well. I then had to log out of iCloud for some reason not related to photos. When I logged back in, it proceeded to delete all my albums and pics because for some reason, sync from iCloud library had turned itself on (I use usb to computer to sync everything, not iCloud). No matter what I did, I could not recover the pics in the iPad, not even with iTunes and sync all pictures and albums. I ended up doing a complete restore and was able to totally restore my pics to my iPad. The kicker was that I had to sync it 20 or so times with multiple iPad reboots. Kinda like spoon feeding and elephant with burpings in between.

Last night i installed iOS 11.2 beta 2 in the hopes that a corrective action had been taken. Well, after the install and reboot, once again, all my pics and albums were gone. For the next 9.5 hours, photos was “restoring” which rendered my iPad glitchy and unstable and not even able to open up an app without crashing. When it finally finished, all my photos were back but no albums. By some miracle the albums appeared about an hour later and all was actually accurately restored.

I have filed numerous bug reports on this and I think my Apple case I have open is about the size of a novel about now.

The bottom line is that I had no issues with iOS 10 and the problem with all this is squarely a bug infected iOS 11. Please Apple, fix this!

ok just an update on my situation. I updated my iPod Touch 6g to iOS 11.1.1. last night then plugged it into iTunes to add a couple of new music albums. Did the whole sync, ticked all 25,000 photos from external HD (I don’t use iCloud library).

I wasn’t expecting the photos to sync properly. However I was surprised to find that about 98% of my photos had been copied over and they were in their right albums. Some albums did have some missing photos.

The other fix was the “People from my Mac” folder containing albums of separate faces were all there and in order. There were not duplicates.

I was happy. Turned off the device and left it. An hour later I went to check it again and the following changes occurred:

1. That stupid unwanted “People” folder started filling up with people. I hate this folder. I don’t know why someone using "People" on Photos on Mac need ANOTHER folder on their device doing the same thing. But Apple have been doing this since iOS 10.

2. My real “People from My Mac” folder produced several duplicates of several people

3. The main Albums section of the photos App also changed. Now more folders appeared containing the same folders as the “People from my Mac” Albums. Many were duplicates. two people have three folders.

This morning I tried updating and syncing my iPAD Pro. No Change. All folders are there, but they are empty. When I plug it into to iTunes it says 25,00 photos are on my iPad. When I go to General>About it says there are 1188 photos on the iPad.

This is getting ridiculous. I wish Apple would spend more time fixing these problems, rather than creating more stupid childish animojis and emojis.

I agree, Photos is most likely not going away. And I also agree that this is an iOS 11 problem. I also believe a software fix is coming but it's a priorities issue for Apple.

A matter of perspective... Back in April, Apple announced that they have 100 million Mac users but that is only 10% of the 1 billion total users they have. And users that sync from their Mac to their iPad is a subset of the 100 million that was just further reduced to a smaller subset when Apple removed app management from iTunes. And with the relative new release of iPhone X and 8 and the huge quantity of iOS bugs they've had to squash, it's clear that the fix for photo sync has taken a back seat. Also, the new features added for iPad functionality (the dock, the revised control panel, side by side app drag launch and others) may have caused some collateral issues with common use software subroutines in the iPad iOS.

As I posted a month ago several pages up, Apple contacted me (and one other person I know of) regarding this sync problem. They set up screen sharing and collected diagnostic data from both the iPad and my Mac and I uploaded to a provided link - all for the purpose of providing diagnostic data for their software engineers to troubleshoot and come up with a software fix. Our fix is coming but not until they get the phone user base satisfied. It's all about priorities and we are most likely way down the list. I know it's painful because I feel the pain as well. I have over 42K photos on my mac that I'm trying to shuffle back and forth to my iPad. Having been contacted by Apple has kept me positive but like all of you, my patience is wearing thin.

I have been having the same issue with a large library 3 iPads and 2 iPhones none of which are syncing pictures into albums now. I thought I would email tim@apple, cue@apple etc with a two or three sentence (polite) description and a link to this discussion. Lo and behold, they called back, but we haven't connected yet. So, if you are seeing the issue in addition to doing a bug report or feedback report maybe send a nice email too.

I have an open case and have filed 5 bug reports on this. Please, everyone who has a problem with this do call Apple and report this over again if you have to. In my bug reports and my open case I have referenced this thread so they do know about this.

Yes - I have also reported to Apple for the 3rd time and referenced this discussion group with link. They have screen shots and all relevant data.

I’m advised for the third time that Apple Engineers are still to report back.

It seems that there is no solution other than to continue to report these sync problems and empty photo albums on devices to Apple until the bug still in iOS 11.1.1 is dealt with. Thanks to all.

Try Google Photos

I have now gone over to them while this MESS in MacPhotos continues.

The only trouble is I cannot find how to sort albums alphabetically once you have them in Google Photos. Otherwise it syncs well with computer, phone and ipad..

Got a down to factory reset iPhone 6+ running iOS 11.1.2 and to my utter amazement I was able to sync my complete photo library of 17,818 pictures completely and accurately in one sync session. Maybe something has already been tweeked in the latest iOS?

Factory restore doesn’t work. Half the people on here have tried it. I have done it several times with my various iOS devices. No joy.

Things have now gone from bad to worse with me (see previous posts above). I got a couple of new music albums, put them on iTunes, and then tried to sync them to my devices. Everything looked like it was syncing then all of a sudden the syncing finished. I checked to see if everything was synced onto the music app (I don’t bother nowadays to check my photos anymore). However ALL my music, even the ones which had already been there were now grey listed and unavailable to play.

I have been speaking to an apple adviser regarding the photos for the past 4 weeks. Spoke to her last Friday. She told me the apple engineers know about the photo problem and to give the engineers two weeks to fix it.

It’s become laughable now.

I thought things had worked themselves out. My devices have been syncing ok recently, but today I’ve noticed I have one image ‘uploading’ from my iPad. This was a photo I put on it on Wednesday this week. It’s not going anywhere.

On the same devices Google Photos syncs instantly between the devices. No issues, no delays.

Personally I think its the Apple servers and not IOS 11, or at least the interaction between them.

It really is pathetic that a company like Apple get way with this.

I also hope that this is not intentional (but due to sloppiness). On the other hand, the Apple I know since 2001 sometimes leaves particular issues unattended to then come up with a sweeping new and mostly, better solution. The former is conspiracy theory, the second an observation.

The issue with iCloud sync is that it is vastly inferior to the USB sync method. As far as i know i cannot selectively sync individual albums and thus, for me at least iCloud sync is simply not an option (i have more than 40,000 photos in my Photos library, mostly not so small 24-36 MP JPEGs imported after sometimes extensive RAW editing in Lightroom).