sync session failed to finish

I battled this for months and now have it working - hopefully it helps you too.

I too worked out that it was the photos causing the problem, but couldn't delete the photos because the sync fails to finish. The photos were still on my iphone but couldn't be deleted (the bin was greyed out).

I believe the problem is that apple have quietly removed the visible photo albums from the photos app (to try to strong-arm us into using icloud photo sync). This leaves photos on the iphone but itunes thinks they're not there - when it tries to sync, they are there and it shats its pants and cancels the sync. Anyway, this is what I had to do:

1. Backup your phone with encryption - the sync will 'fail to finish' but you should be able to back up.

2. Erase all contents and settings from your iphone - obviously, this deletes the photos from your phone, the only way to do so

3. Plug in and restore from your backup. It will re-sync all your apps, photos and music but this time the photos are truly not there, so it successfully finishes.

Be warned, when your photo library has finished syncing, there are no more visible albums matching the photo folders on your computer, but you can find them by searching for them.

Solved:

• turn on iCloud Photos
• you will then be prompted with a warning message informing you that this will erase your iPhone photos and replace them with your iCloud Photos
• once deletion is complete, turn off iCloud Photos and start syncing again as previously

Note 1: it took me 3 times to completely delete my photos, each time showing a decreasing number of photos remaining to delete, I assume this is due to the quantity of photos to process (initially there was 14k photos on my phone)

Note 2: iPhoneX with latest ios, and uploaded some random photos in iCloud from MacBook Pro so as to have the iCloud photos folder not empty. I did not however actually downloaded those, it was not necessary in the end

Hello abbyh

If the pc not sync with your photos maybe the mistake from your ID account. You must be sign in to the google on your PC. which your sign up ID icloud also.

And then you sign in one ore more accounts on iphone same this object to do next step. Now go to -->setting --> Account which the menu button on top right hand from Google Browser -->

choose synce all (should choice the ID google - icloud to be the main personal using to synce data with all of any different ID). Remember that important if you want to be synce must be have got the apps third party or Browser such google or Firefox on your PC.

And the second request to set up photos Album on Iphone make sure you using IOS 9.3.0 latest. Its already to have albulm for you to creat photos immediately. So if you used the ios 8 or 7 that could not be to do this option. Lets save data backup often to update your ios first.

Goodluck

Thanks best regard

T H A N K Y O U !

This has been driving me insane for the past 18 months but now I can finally sync my photos to my iPhone 6 again. You are a Genius. I was ready to do a factory reset on my phone to try to reinitialise photos but just in the nick of time I found your brilliant idea to turn on iCloud photos in order to delete the photos on the phone. Thank goodness I don't have to reinstall my whole phone now.

Awesome! Thanks simons_b - this was driving me mad and is the only thing that worked for me.

turn on icould photos means iCloud photo library?

Really helpful!! Thanks!! I've been trying to solve this problem for almost 3 years!

did you ever find a solution to this issue?? Ive been having this issue for over a year , I have contacted apple support but still have found a solution, thanks!