can not sync photos with ios 11.3 and itunes 12.7.4

I worked with a senior advisor a couple of days ago who told me to leave my iPad connected longer. I was giving up after 15 minutes and disconnecting. Last night my Mini iPad 4 finally finished syncing! I had left it for an hour, but happy to see it added a new folder of photos and my music videos. This morning my iPad finally finished syncing. It took 2 hours.

Hope Apple comes up with a fix soon so devices can sync quickly like they use to.

I tried ErgoEdbo's method of deleting the Photo Cache folder. I then tried to sync an iPad mini with 1759 photos from various subfolders. It eventually synced all the photos after many failed/incomplete syncs. One time iTunes crashed during the sync. Other times it would just terminate the sync with some error.

Reading photos during a sync now takes a ridiculously long time (> 15 minutes!) even though there are no new photos to sync.

Maybe it isn't really locked up but is just suddenly very inefficient at processing photos. Either way, these long delays and crashes while syncing are not acceptable.

Until they fix this bug, I'm going to disable photo sync but keep the existing photos on the iPad.

I couldnt sync my photos with 12.7.3 either. I’d get an error message, “internal device error.”

I’ve been working with a Senior Apple Advisor since the fall on that problem which started with iOS 11.

Hi all

I have had this frustrating problem synching photos from iTunes 12.7.4 to my new iPhone X.

My Apple senior adviser suggested a very simple workaround which doesn't involve downgrading to iTunes 12.7.3.

All he suggested I do was find the subfolder in my main Photos folder called "iPod Photo cache" and drop and drag it to my desktop for safe keeping. Then try the sync again as usual. It worked perfectly and now all my 18,000 photos are on my iphone X in their correct albums/subfolders.

I guess the photo cache conflicts with the itunes software, so the solution is to find somewhere else for the cache to be stored while you copy your photos.

Good luck!

Yes this will copy your photos, however you risk loosing you albums which are sub-folders in windows.

It is also a full copy of all your photos which if you have a lot takes a long time

Not a good solution overall.

Regressing iTunes is the only real workaround

12.7.3 downgrade worked for me. If we have isolated the issue directly to the iTunes 12.7.4 version why is Apple still prompting for users to upgrade? I would think they would at least halt release so that more users would not run into this bug and mess up their syncing. I can see holding off if they got a release out quickly but we are going on two weeks here!

Honestly, I dont think the problem is widespread as it affects users that sync photos to their devices. I do not personally know anyone who syncs photos from their computer to their devices, and I was surprised of the number of people posting in this community about the issue. Just a thought…

There are at least 15 posts on this forum regarding photos, I looked at a couple of them to see how many had said they had the same problem and there were 316 on one and 100 on the other, with 284 on this thread. As a percentage of Apple Users as a whole I guess it doesn't seem to be many people but to each of us experiencing the problem it is an inconvenience.

Big thanks to all who have contributed on this post helping us to solve the problem.

There is no excuse for Apple to not have put a warning on the latest update to not do the update if you sync your pictures with ITunes and to not a have a link where we can go and have ITunes automatically downgraded to the last version. They should have also informed us of the problem so we did not waste our time trying to figure it out. It has also been way to long for a fix. Are they trying to force us to pay for storing photos in the cloud? Someone should sue Apple.

I am still not over how when you upgraded to IOS 11 and synced your photos with ITunes all the work you had done identifying people was erased. I had spent hundreds of hours going through all my pictures identifying people and then IOS 11 erased it all to give us what they said was a better system. It is not and there was no excuse to erase all the work we had done identifying people.

There are many posts. I’m included in many of them. I was surprised that there were this many people syncing photos to their devices because in person, I haven’t met anyone. However, I’m into photos, but most of my friends are not. This created a HUGE problem for me.

Nope... I have not wanted to roll back to 12.7.3 and am hoping for a new revision soon. I have tried deleting the photo cache and removing all photos from the iPhone, and then re-syncing as others have suggested. Nothing has worked to reduce the ridiculous sync times so far. I really hope a new version is released soon.

An update. I am still waiting for apple to call me back. Phone call is to be this afternoon. In the meantime, I remembered that I had an iPod Touch that I do not normally use for photos but only music. It has iOS 11.2.6 installed. I decided to sync a small photo folder with 10 pitures with iTunes 12.7.4.76 to see what happened. IT DID SYNC CORRECTLY!!!! My conclusion: the problem lies somewhere between the two applications. I intend to report this finding to apple when they call.

I am getting tired of waiting for a fix.

I am not sure if the following will also help Apple but here goes:

I posted on 5th April: 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).

Just had a further go at synching to the device, which had been turned off after that last attempt, and I had removed the photos I previously synched before I turned it off. The albums have synched over. Device is an ipod Touch from 2015 128 Gb with OS 11.2.5.

Anyone get it to work with the new version of Itunes 12.74.80? I have downloaded and installed it and its been stuck on reading the photos again. Really irritating they would release a new version without fixing it. But maybe we have to do something to get it to work right. It had been updating for about 8 hours trying to get some more pictures on when the new version appeared on my task bar. I canceled the sync, installed the new version and have tried to sync again.

i have this question too

Now I completely uninstall all itunes app from my PC and erase all apple folders and downloading the last itunes and will try again I already saved my photos organized in folders to sync with i tunes as a albums

after new clan install of itunes i will tell you what hapen