can not sync photos with ios 11.3 and itunes 12.7.4

So glad to find out it wasn't only me. Same issue. Stuck on reading photos for hours. I'm IOS 11.3, iphone X, latest itunes upgrade to 12.7.4. I'm afraid to downgrade because I have 7000 pos and 8000 songs. Im hoping for a quick fix with a 12.7.5 update that fixes the bug. Irritated lately with these updates that ruin stuff. Guess I'll keep checking back.

If it helps, I had 42,665 photos and 3,000 songs that got wiped off of my phone thanks to the “help” of an AppleCare senior advisor. I spent HOURS over THREE DAYS with them trying to find a resolution until finally speaking to a different senior advisor there who knew about the issue and wasn’t guessing on how to fix it.

Good thing I had everything backed up onto my external hard drive on my computer. Find my post in this thread that contains the links and directions to revert back to iTunes 12.7.3.....it got me all of my stuff back on my phone by syncing as normal through iTunes and was relatively simple. Good luck!!!!

Downgrading iTunes has fixed the issue. Not going to update to iTunes until they release a new version & acknowledge this has been fixed.

I’m not annoyed that I couldn't sync photos, what really has annoyed me is Apple refusing to acknowledge it is a fault with iTunes. It’s affected enough users for them to be aware the fault is with iTunes & say a fix is on the way. The solutions offered by tech support are apologetically pointless & I suggest people either downgrade to the previous version of iTunes (be aware of risks with library versions) or wait & hope Apple releases a fix soon.

Same here after upgrading to 12.7.4.! Going back to 12.7.3. and replacing the 12.7.4 version library with the one that (thankfully) got backed up before upgrading to 12.7.4. (as described by philipp273 at page 01 of this thread, big time thanks Philipp) did the trick.

I have just synched my iPod Pro (9.7" version from the original release) and the albums are still there, so for me it is just the iPhone 7plus that has the problem.

If needed my info is: PC is Windows 10 fully updated, iPhone 7plus fully updated and as for others this has only happened since I updated iTunes last night.

Edit 5 April 21.30 - iPod Touch with OS 11.2.5 which has been out of use for a few weeks - just synched photos to it and as with the iPhone, the photos have synched but no albums show. Before synching I checked the iPod photo cache file and the date modified for that had not changed when I synched the iPad Pro, nor had the amount of data stored there so I suspect that for unknown reasons nothing actually happened with the photos when that synched (leaving the few albums on there as they were).

I presume the fact that a synch to a device with an older OS aids proving that it is the latest iTunes update for Windows that is causing the problem??

I now can't get photos removed from my iPad Air 2 or iPhone 6S. In the Photos app, my albums are gone but all my photos sorted by year still remain (left-most Photos button within Photos app). iTunes shows them as taking up space on my devices. I've tried downgrading iTunes and still was not able to properly sync photos. I've tried toggling the Sync Photos option in iTunes with no success. I've considered resetting my devices and would prefer to test with my iPad, but I have the T-Mobile free data for life and am concerned that I may lose it if I reset my device.

Had the same issue during this entire mess. Literally couldn't get the photos off the phone no matter what I did. Unchecked the sync photos box but they stayed there.

Hate to be bearer of bad news, but the only fix for this for me was to first reset my iPhone. Then the photos were gone and I was able to downgrade to 12.7.3.

Complete joke. Outstanding service Apple.

The iTunes update seems to have removed the folder structure that put the albums section in place - I've just scrolled through the iTunes for Mac section and no mention of this being a problem for them so it seems to be just for Windows users.

I manually manage everything to my devices - although the albums are not showing in the photos app, the photos you have been synching to your devices are there. If I wanted to remove an album when my device is connected to my computer I would just untick that album from my folders list as I have it set to only synch specific folders. In the test I just did with an old iPhone touch with a previous OS I used that method to synch specific albums and then to remove them. Might be worth switching to manually manage temporarily and use that method to remove the photos (I was removing complete albums of course which I have set up in my pictures folder in Windows 10 so if you only want to remove one or two photos you would first have to remove them from that folder in Windows File Manager so they did not re-synch to your device).

Did not work. Created an empty folder, selected it as the only folder to sync. iTunes claims a successful sync, no folders (including this empty one) appearing in "Albums." All the old synced folders (from Windows Pictures directory) are missing, yet the their contents are still appearing in the "Photos" section. A previous post mentioned manually managing these on the iPhone. These photos are not in the camera roll and subsequently not in the DCIM directory so I cannot just manually removed them. They were added by iTunes and must be removed by iTunes. However, iTunes is an utter failure.

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.

I see what you mean. This is actually exactly how I sync my pictures. I too manually managed the synced folders. I synced about 10,000 / 20,000 photos/videos on my PC. I actually can't achieve the end result you mention though. Both my iPad and iPhone either error out or sync/remove nothing. I've synced this way since 2012 and this is the first I've every had any major trouble with it.

Well, this is exactly how I sync my photos (as are apparently Denise Woodcock and AirJordan613) for a very long time. It does usually work and stopped working only with the latest update of iTunes (and it also broke a few times before, usually when updating iOS). So in general that feature does exist and does work. It only seems that this feature is not part of any testing when updates of iOS or iTunes are to be released.

I would hope that with the next update of iTunes it will be working again, until then I‘ll stay on the older iTunes version.

The feature does usually work, this is the first time in my years of using iPhones (since the second iPhone release) that there has been a problem. I wasn't aware there were thousands of posts on here about this.

Since day one my iTunes has been set to manually manage all my devices (I've upgraded my phone with each release up to the 7 plus, have had each issue of the iPod Touch, two iPad minis, iPad Air, IPad Pro) and no problems at all with synching photos.

So the feature does work, but for some reason it is not working for you - do photos synch if you do not manually manage your device - obviously you can't test this out at the moment due to the problems but hopefully Apple will update the Windows release of iTunes soon so when that happens worth trying.

I am assuming you do have your iTunes summary page for your device set to manually manage (in the options menu, not the manually back up link in the back up menu) - my own set up has that and back up to this computer (I don't use the cloud).

I had the same problem sometime ago with a different iOS release and new iTunes software. My fix this time around was the same, and it works! I use Windows 10, and an iPhone X & iPad Pro.

Step 1: Go to your target photo folder (which includes all of its sub folders, and DELETE the iPod Photo Cache folder.

Step 2. Perform a sync on your device, but UNCHECK the “Sync Photos” box, when prompted, select “remove all photos from device” (this action will erase everything from your device). Complete the sync.

Step 3: After disconnecting USB from PC, perform a “hard reboot” of phone or pad & restart the device.

Step 4: Begin a new sync, this time, CHECKING the box to “Sync Photos” (this action will result in recopying ALL of your target folders & photos, and can take some time to complete, as it would if you were setting up a brand new device)

Step 5: After all photos and appropriate folders have been recopied during the sync, everything should be just fine & complete as it was before the combination of iOS 11.3 & iTunes 12.7.4 CAUSED this irritating problem!

After performing these fairly time-consuming & irritatub processes, I found that all SUBSEQUENT syncs run just as normally as they had done previously! Personally, I routinely sync between 500-2000 photos & folders, and found that this worked perfectly for me on both my iPhone X & my iPad Pro!! I do hope that this had helped everyone with this issue, Good Luck in getting things back to NORMAL!

I tried this with an apple tech and it did not work. Only thing different that in the interest of time, he had me recheck only two photo folders not the entire collection. The best we could do it eventually get an empty folder on the iphone but with no content.