Apple device app not syncing photos

Question

Apple device app not syncing photos

I recently was forced to download Apple Device app, Apple Music app, and Apple TV app on my PC due to iTunes not compatible with music, photos, tv, or movies. It took me a few days to get my all my files move to their rightful apps. But right now I am having a really big issue with my photos not syncing from my computer to my iPhone like it did with iTunes. I do not use iCloud. All my photos are on an external hard drive that I access through my PC. I have never had a issue with iTunes downloading my pictures this way. But now this new app won’t allow me to. Does anyone else have this issue? Or have any suggestion on how to fix it? None of the Apple specialists on the 1-800 # knows what to do. They think iTunes is still running like normal.

Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Jun 27, 2025 02:14 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Jul 12, 2025 09:05 PM in response to clukas1967

Two more pieces of intel on my situation...

Would help to start by knowing where the "Apple Devices" error log file would be stored, or to enable file-by-file sync error/warn logging if not automatically enabled.
The "My Pictures" directory in Windows is symlinked to a folder on my Synology NAS. I already had a problem last year when I first tried the beta versions of Apple Devices that it could not do a device backup to a symlinked directory so I had to create a special windows hardlink to the NAS for the apple backup directory. If that wasn't properly implemented then maybe there are symlink problems with photos too? Again the odd thing is that videos appear just fine so Apple Devices is clearly able to read the folder hierarchy.

Reply

Answer 2

Jul 12, 2025 08:47 PM in response to Mikiemike1983

Exact same problem. Managed to put it off for a while by running iTunes for years. But with Apple's recent elimination of photo/video support in iTunes for Windows I had to finally switch to the "Apple Devices" app for backups & sync.

I am having all kinds of trouble syncing photos from a windows folder hierarchy. Strangely, videos sync fine. When photos do come over, there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to whether they are JPG or native DNG shot from my iPhone and later sorted and moved to the Windows folder hierarchy for permanent storage.

I am an amateur photographer and one of the reasons I cannot use iCloud for photos is all the "hidden" downscaling that takes place when these things are uploaded. I process my own RAW / DNG images in Photoshop and save out at very high resolution. Therefore I keep a folder hierarchy on my personal NAS server and use that for syncing to my iPhone/iPad.

This is beyond annoying as the entire point of carrying my iPad with me on family trips is to share the latest photos of whatever we have been up to. Haven't been able to do that for a few months now since switching from iTunes to Apple Devices.

Apple - I work in Silicon Valley and have been a SW dev in the past and Apple Developer. Have TestFlight account. Happy to help debug this issue.

Reply