can not sync photos with ios 11.3 and itunes 12.7.4

There will be no solution ( I think ) if we are still keeping our IPhone or IPad without reset all content and settings.

Try to reset everything as if you buy a new one from Apple shop.

I did it, and successful in synchronizing everything as before. No pain.

But there are some steps we have to do:

- I degraded itunes to 12.73,

- Delete Ipod photo cache folder.

- Backup only to the computer ( by pushing the backup button, and not synch it )

- Copy all photos from camera roll (DCIM) to computer, just to make sure all photos are saved.

- Reset the Iphone/Ipad, all content and setting, and become "new iphone"

- Restore from backup.

- After redo some settings, try to synch with computer ( with photo synch keep "untick")

- Then, synch again with selected photos ( incld. video) from your library folders. Try with a few folders.

It takes only 1-2 hrs, and 100% recovered. No more nightmare.

My setup

Iphone X ios 11.3.1

Windows 10 iTunes 12.7.4

14,000 photos and videos in 95 albums

First off, thanks to everybody who has been contributing to this conversation with ideas and workarounds, its been a couple of months now and we only have each other to help out, Apple are nowhere to be seen.

Im not really that tech savvy, the downgrade to 12.7.3 didnt work for me as my PC wouldnt open it as itunes library was created in a later version and i wasnt confident enough to mess with things i didnt really understand. I had already messed with various fixes and ended up losing over half my photos off my phone. Today I got them all back without doing anything too invasive or technical.

Just did a very succesful sync, heres what I did.

Uninstalled itunes on PC

Deleted ipod photo cache in My Pictures

Restarted PC

Reinstalled itunes 12.7.4 from Apple website

On my iPhone (camera roll empty) I activated "icloud photo library" in Settings - Photos. (It gave the warning all photos synced via itunes would be removed) This is what i wanted. So it was a case of tricking the phone into deleting everything synced! I went to "Collections" on the phone and watched live as everything was deleted, took a couple of minutes. Then went straight back to settings and turned "Icloud photo library" off. This was the only way I could remove synced photos off the phone and just unchecking the sync button in itunes didnt remove them, it removed the folders in "albums" but the pictures still existed in "collections".

I now i have an iphone with no synced photos on and a PC with a fresh install of latest iTunes and NO ipod photo cache.

I selected all photos in the sync settings on itunes and hit Sync! It worked at normal speed, took about 45 minutes to CORRECTLY sync over 14,000 photos and videos (25GB).

I am very happy to have everything back on but i have no doubt at all that next time i try to do it it will go back to being stuck reading photos in one of these loops that people are talking about. I think the success in this is that its a fresh sync with fresh itunes with fresh cache and freshly emptied iphone!

Ill now just wait until Apple fix there mess.

I dont really understand everything guys, i may use the incorrect terminology but i came oon here today to share this with you as its an easy was to do a full photo sync without having to rollback software or mess too deep into things that you dont understand (like me!) I think the big thing was to actually get iphone to delete the synced pictures, and clearing the cache on PC.

Unsure what parts of my steps were neccessary and unneccessary but if you have messed with various fixes over the weeks and messed up youre photo library like me this was a non destructive way to do a fresh onetime sync to get everything back. (dont sync a folder at a time... i think you only get one fresh sync so make it count! Do everything in one go...

Hope ive explained it OK and maybe it helps a little.

iTunes 12.7.5.9 and iOS 11.4 have fixed the "Reading Photos" sync issue for me on both an iPhone 7 and iPad mini 4.

Note: I had previously deleted the iPod Photo Cache folder and let iTunes 12.7.4 rebuild it.

If some people are still having problems with the latest versions, it would be worth trying that first.

Hello fellow "iTunes Picture Sync ****" sufferers...

Apple finally FIXED THIS ISSUE with the new iTunes 12.7.5.9 update along with the new iOS 11.4 update for the iPhone. Phew!! Pictures sync and it's back to being fast sync times.

I finally seem to have my phone syncing photos again. After numerous attempts at syncing and deleting the iPod photo cache, hard rebooting my phone, closing and relaunching iTunes, I tried one more time. This time, I deleted the photo cache, emptied my recycle bin, did a sync with "sync photos" checked, telling it where to copy photos from, checked "selected folders" and didn't check any of the folders. This removed all of the empty folders from my phone. I then did yet another sync, this time checking one folder. It worked! Since then, I have been adding folders and have almost put everything back on my phone. In the numerous syncs I have done in the past 12 hours, including making a couple of minor changes to folders, all has worked well. HTH

ITunes 12.7.5.9 fixed this issue for me. I successfully synced all photos and folders on my iPad Air 2 and iPhone X. It took a while because of all my previous attempts to do this with 12.7.4. All my photos were first removed from the devices and then successfully reinstalled correctly. The next attempt to sync went quickly.

Just installed iTunes 12.7.5 (available today May 30 in Australia) and I can now sync Photos without issues quickly

Problem definitively solved with iTunes 12.7.5 update of 29/05/2018.

All working fine again.

You have to do exactly as Phillip wrote: Manually uninstall iTunes 12.7.4 and download 12.7.3, then install that. Also you have to use the last 12.7.3 backup of the iTunes library as described by Phillip.

I've done this on my Windows 10 machine so haven't tried on OS-X. Good luck, it's worth the try.

Well, that is sad but not surprising. Sloppy programming (I can only assume that this is the root cause of our problems here) can happen, it should be discovered in beta testing latest. However, bugs do pass sometimes, users got used to that. Customer service going into complete denial of this possibility is just dismal. Not a moment they consider that this really could be a fault on their part. I guess that's why people are not only talking of Apple fanboys (and gals) but rather of Apple disciples.

Of course it is the iTunes update that creates the fault. I didn't encounter it before, I encountered it for the first time with two devices right after updating iTunes. I updated both devices to the new iOS (thinking that may cure the problem) and still encountered the problem. I reverted to the previous version of iTunes and the problem was solved. Reverting to the old iTunes version did solve the problem for several other users as well.

While it is not impossible that something else is to blame I think there is pretty strong evidence suggesting that it is the update of iTunes that is to blame.

On answering this post I encountered two more examples:

When writing this answer I logged in (as you have to) and the site said that if I would trust this computer then I wouldn't have to verify with two-factor authentication again (I got the code on this same machine, so if anything it was a 1.1-factor authentication). When answering yesterday, I did say that I trusted this computer. It didn't help, I had to do this "safety" log-in thing again.

Second example: When the editor box appeared the site told me that there was an earlier version of this answer from 10 something p.m. yesterday. Well, your post, HaRooNeY, was certainly created much later than that. So, no, there wasn't any previous attempt to answer this post.

My manually managing method does not involve camera roll, just folders from my Windows Pictures library. Nor does it mean you manually removing them per se. Manually managing a device just means you have control of what goes on and nothing gets removed unless you want it removing. I've used the method for so long I cannot remember why I opted to do so, but am happy with using this method and sometimes it helps when problems occur. (It may of course be that what I am going to explain can be done without changing to manually manage.)

First move the iPod photo cache from Pictures to another folder. iTunes will recreate this when it synchs photos across. I'm suggesting move it rather than delete as a 'just in case' measure.

My manually manage method of adding/removing photos is to have specific folders set up in my main Pictures folder which I synch to my devices. Once the device is connected select photos from the menu down the side, sync photos, I then have 'pictures' set for the folder I am copying from. Choose 'selected folders' and then a list of your folders appears, tick the ones you want to synch.

At some point you may be advised that all existing photos will be removed so you will okay that.

You still won't see albums, but hopefully just the photos you want on the phone will show under the 'photos' section of the Photos app.

Very strange indeed. I have been doing photo syncing on all my Apple devices since the they first came out. In my experience, ANY sub folder that did not contain an image wasn’t syced at ALL, yet alone being synced as a folder with no content in it. One thing I might suggest is to create a NEW master syncing folder, copy all your photos & sub folders into IT (EXCLUDING the existing “iPod Photo Cache folder”!). Then, redirect iTunes to that newly created target master folder, and process my suggested steps again. As I had said, THIS procedure WORKED successfully for me this time around, as it had for me on at least two other iOS/iTunes conflicted updates in the past. Good luck.

I have about 8500 photos in the pictures folder on my laptop which I regularly sync with iTunes to 2 ipad pros. Last Saturday I added 30 photos to the folder and tried to sync to one of the ipads (IOS 11.3 and iTunes 12.7.4). I was expecting 10 minutes but the sync hung for hours at step 5 (reading photos). On Sunday I spent several hours on the phone with Apple Support. They were very pleasant and helpful but achieved nothing! I then started reading the posts in this thread - and many thanks to the people who have found the workarounds and solutions. Just to summarise the many hours of my work this week:

I uninstalled iTunes 12.7 4 and installed 12.7.3. This resolved the hanging at step 5 issue and I could run a sync in about 5 minutes. However I was then left with a problem with the windows explorer folders not being copied across to the ipad as albums. I resolved this by:

1. Deleting the cache file in my windows pictures folder
2. Photo sync with the sync photos box unticked (removes all
   photos from the iPad)
3. Disconnect the iPad and restart the iPad
4. Photo sync with the sync photos box ticked (takes several
   hours as has to rebuild the cache file)

After that I added a single photo to my pictures folder, sync with iTunes took 5 minutes and it just copied across the 1 photo - so all good!

Then I tried to sync the 2nd ipad. The sync run OK and copied the photos but only about a quarter of the folder appeared as albums. I resolved this by using steps 2, 3 and 4 only from the above list.

So, in summary there is a serious issue in iTunes 12.7.4 with syncing photos, reverting to 12.7.3 fixes this.

Additionally there seems to be a second issue with windows folders not coming across as albums - may be a IOS11.3 issue?

Once again thanks to the contributors to this thread that have found the workarounds and solutions

Downgrading didn't even work for me.. I think it's also an issue with 11.3 .. it seems like some how the library gets corrupted, when I delete my images ( unchecking the sync photos button ) .. it LOOKS like my photos are deleted, but when I use ifunbox to browse the filesystem, they're all still there.. it just resets the photos database but keeps the files, and I'm pretty sure that's a bug.

I think this results in the sync issues because when I delete all of those files manually in the sync folder, the thumbnails folders.. etc... the sync works again.

But yeah.. downgrading to 12.7.3 didn't do anything to help me.