I created a new album with 200 photos in Photos on my mac. I selected the album to be included in sync to my iPhone and iPad. Only 1 photo is in the album on my iPhone. Only 118 are on my iPad.
I removed all photos from both, restarted the devices and my Mac, then added them back. Same result.
I restored the ipad from backup and resynced. Same result.
Any ideas?
My Mac is on 15.5 and the iOS devices are both on 18.5.
HomePod mini, 18
By "syncing" I'm guessing that you mean selective transfer, not synchronizing Libraries, making the Libraries exactly the same as with iCloud-- is that right? And you're using the Finder for this?
I'm not sure what's going on, but try these things to help narrow things down:
Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support
The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.
Let us know what happens…
The library has just over 16,189 photos. They are all still where they should be on the Mac.
There are all kinds of pics that aren't syncing from other albums also that should be, this particular new album is just the one that got my attention.
Looking further, Apple clearly missed something with Photos version 10 or the Mac OS 15.5 indexing. I also see that some photos I Airdropped from someone else's iphone directly to the Photos library on my Mac, now how up as greyed out files in my downloads folder. They are in my library. If I try to delete them from the downloads folder I get an error message that they're in use by another app.
These are not the same pics that aren't syncing in the new album.
There's definitely a but somewhere related to the Photos library, and I'd guess it's also screwing up my syncing.
By "syncing", I mean connecting my iPhone and iPad to my Mac with a USB cabe and clicking "Sync" in the Finder window. I do not use iCloud syncing. I have selected specific photo albums and music playlists for syncing.
I've tried everything in your list except safe mode or a test library.
Interestingly, the albums are intact when streaming to Apple TV using the Apple TV app to show them (rather than Airplaying from the Mac).
Sure suggests an index issue between Mac OS and iOS to me. I'll try safe mode next.
pshill84 wrote:
By "syncing", I mean connecting my iPhone and iPad to my Mac with a USB cabe and clicking "Sync" in the Finder window. I do not use iCloud syncing. I have selected specific photo albums and music playlists for syncing.
Syncing Photos albums via Finder & USB to iPhone/iPad has always been more or less flaky.
It seemed a little better until recently I had numerous images and movies that failed to sync no matter what. For example (macOS 15.5, iPadOS 18.5):
I unsynced and then re-synced an album that had been gradually updated during the last months suspecting that the updates did not properly go to the Photos database but nevertheless numerous images on the iPad were not synced.
I then emptied the iPad completely by a) syncing an empty dummy iCloud Photos to it or/and an empty Finder folder to it, and also deleted iPod Photo Cache folder inside Photos library (backup and be careful if you try this because Photos library package's contents should generally not be messed with) and then synced some albums. Previously that iPod Photo Cache reset had helped. But not this time.
I then nuked the whole Photos library and created it from scratch (I have originals archived in plain Finder folders on external HDDs). But again numerous images and movies failed to sync. After I did a few more syncs and added some more albums to be synced, then some images and movies missing from the previous syncs started to appear but I have not checked how many images and movie might still be missing.
So repeated syncs might yield better results.
<sigh> This flaky sync has been an issue for a long time. A few years ago I got so frustrated that I even emailed Tim Cook and asked if he was aware of this issue, but got only a lukewarm reply from some of his secretaries suggesting a phone consultation from the support staff although I already had provided all details via email. So no "Jobsian moment" when an average user complaining to the top level gets things fixed :-/
Matti,
I'm guessing this all happens with Finder Sync? Can you use Image Capture to transfer to Finder folders and then import to Photos? Image Capture only works one way, of course, so how about using an external drive and the Files app on the iPad? Any of that work?
I think that Apple is paying less attention to Finder "syncing."
Richard.Taylor wrote:
I'm guessing this all happens with Finder Sync? Can you use Image Capture to transfer to Finder folders and then import to Photos? Image Capture only works one way, of course, so how about using an external drive and the Files app on the iPad? Any of that work?
I think that Apple is paying less attention to Finder "syncing."
Yes, I have synced Mac Photos library albums via Finder & USB to iPad.
I recently tested also iCloud Photos and bought 2 TB iCloud Drive space hoping that I could fit all 450 GB library (36 000 images and 3 000 movies) to it and also share it to my family of six. But some family members' iOS and macOS were slightly too old for iCloud Photos family sharing, one iOS 18 iPhone could not accept invitation at all, and the final embarrassing culprit was when one user's all old personal iPhone images spilled to other users' shared images.
So I downgraded to just 200 GB iCloud and back to local sync. I have used iPhone/iPad Files.app in a more limited scale for images.
You tell us the number of pictures in the albums. But are the 200 pictures in your Library? You might look in Recently Saved or Imports or sort your Library by Recently Added.
And the pics are not in the library on the ios devices, but they are on the mac.
How does using an external drive work for transferring pictures?
Photos not syncing from Mac to iOS devices
