iTunes stuck on "Reading photos from Pictures"

I had a similar problem with my wife's iPad (all photos there but not in my albums). I unchecked the box to sync photos and ok'd it deleting all the photos on the iPad and synced it. Once that was complete, I checked and the photos were gone. I then checked the box to sync photos, made sure it was looking at the right directory and synced it again. The sync worked quickly and, on completion, all photos were back on the iPad and in their albums. (I think I did switch it off and on again after deleting the photos but don't think that makes any difference.) Give it a go!

First go into your pc to delete the iPod photo cache. Do a hard reset on your iDevice. In iTunes, uncheck all your photo folders to wipe out or unsync photos from your device. After this, check those folders you want your photos to import from. Click “Apply” to start the sync process. You should be able to accomplish the task. For me, it took 45 min to sync 3500 photos to my iPad Air.

I noticed this issue at the beginning of April with my iPhone 7 and iTunes. Unlike HDL_NYC, I gave up after two hours and killed the sync, doing so also on a number of subsequent occasions. I presumed that it was due to some glitch following an iTunes or iOS update and expected that a subsequent release would sort things. When this didn't happen, I finally 'phoned Apple Support on 30th May. Amazingly, they initially claimed not to know about the issue. However, when I persisted. I was told that it was a known issue and that the technical people were working to sort out the problem - although there was no known date as to how soon this would be. You can imagine my surprise when I came across this forum and learned yesterday, that the problem had been fixed(?) with the release of a new version of iOS and iTunes. I am pleased to say that the new updates have worked for me and I have been able to sync my iPhone with iTunes for the first time in two months. However, given some of the experiences reported by others who have successfully updated but subsequently experienced problems again, I am a little anxious as to how permanent a fix this will turn out to be. Also, as some others on this forum have suggested, I find it astonishing that Apple have not cracked this problem sooner - or at least fronted-up to admit that the issue exists - at least for some users. Holding their hands up may not have solved the problem, but it may have saved some people a lot of grief and at the very least, it would have shown that they were working on the issue and exhibited an effort at good public relations. Oh, and by the way, I have an iPod Touch running iOS 5.1.1 which also failed to sync (but is now OK) - so I don't know if means that the problem was with iTunes?

Finally it actually worked 👏-1F3FB; A recent sync left none of the albums from my PC onto my iPad. So what I did is while the iPad was still connected to iTunes I unticked the box that says ‘include videos‘ and within seconds all albums from my PC instantly appeared on my iPad. I then re-ticked the box that says ‘include videos‘ and hit sync and all 51 videos synced to my iPad within 20 minutes and it didn’t affect the albums either, they still remained on my iPad 😁 Hallelujah but why does something so easy have to become such a nightmare. Probably won’t work for everyone but I thought I’d share it as when things don’t work we try every scenario possible before we start pulling our hair out.

Go to Microsoft Windows Store to look for Apple iTunes app. Download it from there. I guess this is the Windows version specially configured for PC and the missing “signature“ may probably related to your Microsoft account. If you haven’t removed your existing iTunes it will ask you to give permission to remove it. The installation process continues and replaces with the Windows version. In no way should it affect your iTunes library or your pc folders where your photos are synced from. Give it a shot.

If this fails, then your device internal system may need to reset. If you have a latest FULL backup of your device on iTunes, I recommend doing a restore. Otherwise try backing up your device on iTunes before you proceed. You can check the date/time when it was last backed up in the Summary in iTunes. It is not a “dreadful” process, but it does take time and patience. You should have almost all contents retained, except perhaps passwords that you‘ve asked your device to remember such as WiFi. Emails, apps. etc.

I have gone through this process before with an Apple senior advisor on the phone. My iPad can now sync very well like before. I also managed to reset my iPhone to sync on iTunes without any problems.

For me (with the same config) it was due to a permissions problem. The currently logged in windows user did not have write permissions. Changed the permissions and it was all good again (I guess deleting the folder can also be healty). Thanks to all that replied for helping me hunt down my problem. Hope this helps others.

The iPod Photo Cache is located in the main folder you select in the Photos -> Sync Photos -> Copy Photos From.

It's been reported to Apple - remember that most people posting on this forum are users rather than employees.

This post has details of how to go back to the previous iTunes which solves the problem until Apple have resolved the problem which only appears to affect Windows users - not sure if all users are affected.

can not sync photos with ios 11.3 and itunes 12.7.4

If it’s “corrupted photos” then Apple is looking for something in the current version of ITunes that has never mattered before. I think that’s crap. Returning to the previous version of ITunes completely fixes the issue. There are instructions on this forum as to how to do that. I returned to the previous version, set ITunes to never update or check for updates again, and completely “fixed” the problem. As long as my photos sync and my music plays, I don’t need ITunes updates. And if this quality control mess isn’t fixed by the time I update my phone, I’ll be buying Samsung.

I have just done another successful sync without deleting any directories or reverting back to previous versions of anything. Instead of 20 minutes short of 7 hours, the successful sync took only 5 hours and 28 minutes for slightly more than 5000 photos. All the F** directories (and *.ithmb files within those directories) in iPod Photo Cache still have the same time and date signatures as the previously created files reported in my comment of 26/04/18 above. However, the Photo Database file has been updated with the time and date signature of the completion of the sync.

I have checked the iPhone photos and all appear to be in place under Albums with the same names as the sub-directories of my PC Pictures directory. I did not have any favorites or other markup so this is a simple test case without any other complications.

This second successful sync was carried out with iTunes 12.7.4.80 under Windows 10 and iPhone 6s under iOS 11.3.1 like the previously successful result on 26/04/18.

The only confusing aspect I found was that the progress bar for the "Reading Photos from..." step quickly reached 100% done and stayed there throughout the Reading Photos step. So it did appear that the the Reading Photos step had frozen. In my case it was not frozen. The step was simply incredibly slow.

Unless I have another failed sync, as others have reported in this thread, I will not try deleting the iPod Photo Cache directory.

Unless anyone has specific evidence that their "Reading Photos from..." step really is frozen (my Task Manager reported iTunes consuming 70% CPU throughout the "Reading Photos step), then others should try just running the sync overnight using 1000 photos per hour as a very rough guideline (clearly depends on processors and memory) for expectations.

Of course, this does not address the real problem that many have reported here where a very small Pictures directory simply fails to copy over to their phone or iPad. Nor does this case address the favorites issues. But this does somewhat illustrate the difficulties Apple is having in solving this issue. An intermittent bug really is the most difficult problem for software people. Until users can report sufficiently well defined cases that can be repeated every time, solving this issue will be very difficult.

Cheers

Ian

And around 9 hours later the sync is complete (for 6,803 photos). So, for me at least, it seems to be working but it takes a very long time! (If I delete iPod Photo Cache first, it is much quicker - around 25-30 minutes to sync.)

Following information in one of the early posts in the thread I will link below, I removed the iPod Photo Cache, synched my phone but in doing so unsynched all the photos, re-booted my iPhone 7Plus and then synched adding back all the photos I had just taken off and since then all photos have synched fine (but have on occasion taken a while). Did the same on iPad Pro and iPod Touch. I did not revert to the earlier iTunes.

So yes, in some instances removing the iPod Photo Cache does work, but obviously not for all. Most people have found reverting to the previous iTunes has solved the problem (full details in the linked thread).

Apple were made aware of this prior to my experiencing the problem (on 3 April) and have been told by various other users, both in store and by reporting the problem on line. I guess until they receive a considerable amount of reports they will not realise this is a major problem for users. The main common denominator is the latest issue of iTunes, (although there are one or two who report they had problems with previous iTunes issues) and Windows users. Prior to the iTunes updates the majority of users in the many many threads on this forum about the matter had no problems synching.

Usually your photos are on the device but not viewable via albums, which is how most of us want to see them. They go into the photos tab of the Photos App, stored in date order.

can not sync photos with ios 11.3 and itunes 12.7.4

I had this problem as well. One guy shared the below steps and when followed, mine was fixed by steps 1-7:

1. quit iTunes
2. unplug phone from computer
3. hard reset on the phone, by holding down home and power buttons together until you see the apple symbol appear
4. restart iTunes
5. use a different OEM lightning sync cable
6. plug it in to different USB port
7. attempt to sync again
8. * if the above doesn't work, restart the computer, and try steps 1-7 again
9. * if the above still doesn't work,
10. try resetting PRAM
    1. shut computer down
    2. let it sit for a minute
    3. hold down Option,Command (on the left side of the keyboard), P, and R keys all at once
    4. press the power button while holding all keys
    5. listen for the first, normal start-up chime
    6. keep holding all the keys
    7. wait for a second start-up chime
    8. let go of all keys
11. attempt to sync again

I was a late poster to this thread but have had the issue for quite some time. Loaded 12.7.5 last night and already had 11.4 on my iPhoneX. First sync worked fairly quickly since the 10K photos were already on my device (just not in folders). All folders now in place and photos back where they belong. Hope this remains "fixed"... but happy that it has been addressed.

I wrote in this thread about a week ago. I am having the same problem with getting photos on my iPhone 6 running the latest version of iOS. It seems that when I updated to the newest version of iTunes in March I've had this problem full blown. Was having trouble before that, but was able to get photos and music on my devices.

I'm glad to hear that some of you have this issue resolved with the newest version of iTunes, but I'm afraid to update it after downgrading it to 12.6.2.20. This was the version I could find that worked. I had to use an previous itunes library.itl file. I found one from 4/17/2017 that worked. But what a nightmare. Everything I had downloaded from 4/28/2017 through last week wasn't on my devices. I thought that anything in the iTunes media folder for music would have updated the itl file. Well, it's the other way around. When you download to a previous version with a previous library, the library writes over the folder instead of the folder writing over the itl file. Well, I had to figure out what music was downloaded in that year, plus I had to redo the artwork for albums. It took me a week just to get the music figured out and get all the photos back on my phone. I just finished updating my iPhone yesterday. I'm now working on my iPad. But I was able to transfer all my photos back to my iPhone by downgrading. I did have a LOT of crashes, but after four to five days, I was able to get it all on the phone. So I'm afraid to update to the new version and find out it doesn't work for me and then have to do even a quarter of what I've already done in the last week. Right now I'm uploading to the iPad and it keeps crashing. But it is transferring the photos.

Thank you to this group that suggested to downgrade and helped me do that with the links on downgrading and the link to an earlier version. That solved the problem for me. I will now be saving all versions of iTunes in the future just because of this situation.

For those who still have issues with syncing photos from computer to an iDevice after all the latest updates of iTunes and iOS, I recommend restoring the device after a back up in iTunes. This cleans out the mess created by the previous version of iTunes and possibly by users trying to "fix" the issues by themselves. I had a long phone conversion with an Apple senior advisor, and this approach has worked for my iPad and iPhone. This is a long process but it has proven to work.