iTunes not syncing photos properly

Question

Level 1

14 points

iTunes not syncing photos properly

Hello

My machines are:

mid 2011 mac mini, macOS 10.13, itunes 12.8.3.1
iphone SE (1st gen) 128GB iOS 15.8.3 (freshly updated)

I sync the iphone through USB. Recently I migrated from a 2009 imac that isn't working anymore. No funny stuff whatsoever during the migration if you'd ask me.

iCloud backup is OFF, iCloud photo is OFF.

My issue: itunes is showing thousands of photos on my iphone, even if I uncheck the "sync photos" button and sync the iphone.

I'll give you all the clues in here: when I check the "sync photos" button, it seems to find only 56 pictures in my photo library, but I took way more than 56 in the last year.

What I tried so far:

the "change the date on the iphone to reveal older pictures" trick
removing the "ipod photo cache" in the pictures folder (900MB, backed up if needed)
restoring the iphone!

One last odd thing: when I hold the option button when I launch Photos ( version 3.0 (3291.13.230) ) it shows two library, with the exact same modification date. My picture folder has only 1 library.

My questions would be:

How do I clean that list in Photos?
How do I clean the photos in the iphone and restore a normal behavior for syncing?

Thanks!

Earlier iPhone models

Posted on Aug 4, 2024 2:11 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Dark_Fragor Author

Level 1

14 points

Aug 7, 2024 10:31 AM in response to Dark_Fragor

Well, here's how I solved this issue.

I deleted the Photo Library and restored it from Time Machine. On the next launch of Photos, it repaired the library (it took a while on my old machine given the fact I have 40k+ pictures...).

Strangely it made disappear the second library when I hold the option key during launch.

iTunes is still showing way more picture on my iphone than there really are, but it sync the last year pictures like I asked.

Good enough for today.

Hope it helps

Have a nice day!

Reply