iPhone Sync in Finder does not show Albums from Photos

Question

Level 1

29 points

iPhone Sync in Finder does not show Albums from Photos

I'm new to using Ventura, and haven't used the Finder synch (my prior Mac I still used iTunes).

I've been migrating to Photos and I want to synch my iPhone and select albums from Photos on my Mac.

When I go to the section for Photos, I select "Sync photos to your device from: Photos". I select, "Selected albums". I see nothing under Albums below to allow me to select the albums to sync.

See attached.

FYI, I have looked up other threads on this topic. I have disabled iCould Photo sync.

Mac Studio (2023)

Posted on Jul 30, 2023 6:39 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Matti Haveri

Level 6

16,655 points

Jul 31, 2023 1:20 AM in response to Brent D.

Have you set that Photos library as "System Photos library" in Photos settings?

p.s. Just the other day I had trouble syncing selected Photos library albums to iPad via USB with that Finder setup. I tried multiple times but no matter what hundreds of files failed to sync. Eventually I trashed the 55 GB iPod Photo Cache folder inside the library and let Photos create a new, and after that all images and movies synced OK.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

197,291 points

Aug 5, 2023 12:30 AM in response to Brent D.

I am glad you could solve it. Thank you for posting all the steps.

It is really interesting, that you had to restore the library from a backup to be able to make it the system photos library. The first versions of the Photos User Guide mentioned, that the System Photos Library needs to be stored on an external drive formatted APFS or MacOS Extended (Journaled), if we want to use iCloud Photos, but this hint has been removed from the user guide. Now it only mentions that the the System Photos Library cannot be on a drive used for Time Machine backups: System Photo Library overview in Photos on Mac – Apple Support (UK)

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Answer 3

Brent D. Author

Level 1

29 points

Aug 4, 2023 9:24 PM in response to Brent D.

Well, in case you all were curious:

All these things were true:

I needed to specify my Photos Library as the System Photos Library. Once I was able to do that, the problem I cited above was resolved. I could see the albums in the Finder for my iPhone synch!
The external SSD volume does need to be formatted as APFS, as well as set to ignore ownership.

How I ended up resolving this involved an Apple Support call. Their advice didn't really help in the end, other than to let me know that it should not take more than an instant to specify a library as the System Photos Library. In the end, I went back to my pre-Mac Studio backup of my Photos Library, updated it, repaired it, and then ... it just worked fine: I was able to click the button to set it as the Systems Photos Library, and my iPhone can now synch with Photos.

Phew.

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Answer 4

Brent D. Author

Level 1

29 points

Aug 5, 2023 7:36 AM in response to léonie

It's mysterious how the library I had been working with, in essence, because irretrievably corrupted with respect to the System Photos Library.

The path of that file was:

Many years of being in iPhoto
Migrated to a Photos Library under Mojave
Copied over to a new Mac under Ventura
Opened in Photos
Several days of Photos doing that thing when it optimizes in the background
Lots of Smart Album editing and a couple of imports

The path of the file that worked was:

Many years of being in iPhoto
Migrated to a Photos Library under Mojave
Copied over to a new Mac under Ventura
Opened in Photos

So... not that different. Oddly, Photos has not started doing that thing where is optimizes in the background.

I don't know what to make of it. But... files can get weird some times. That's why backups are important!

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Answer 5

Brent D. Author

Level 1

29 points

Jul 31, 2023 1:59 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Thank you. I see, now that my Photos Library, which was on a different volume than the system volume, was not set as the "System Photos library". I pressed the button to do that and...

.. Photos gave me the beach ball wheel and went into a state of Application Not Responding. I let it sit for over an hour and it did not return from that state. I then force-quit Photos, relaunched it and my Photos Library had become corrupted.

Fortunately, I had a backup from 3am, so I restored that. I launched Photos with it, pressed the button to assign that Photos Library as the System Photos library, and... same thing: beach ball wheel, Application Not Responding.

Just for grins, I'm going to leave it like that. It doesn't seem like it should take hours to assign it like that, but... I've got no other leads at this point and I do have a backup.

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Answer 6

Aug 1, 2023 12:00 AM in response to Brent D.

> Photos Library, which was on a different volume than the system volume

Make sure that volume is formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended because non-Mac formats like exFAT, NTFS etc are not supported and might cause library corruption.

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Answer 7

Brent D. Author

Level 1

29 points

Aug 1, 2023 7:10 PM in response to Brent D.

Update: My second attempt to set the Photos Library as "System Photos library" is ... making progress. While it has been 30 hours or so, with Photos "Not Responding", I noticed that the Date Modified for the Photos Library file, as viewed in the Finder, had updated. I decided to wait.

Sure enough, today, the Date Modified time had changed to 5:59pm when I looked, and since then, changed again to 6:44pm. I looked at my Time Machine backups for the last day and it seemed that the time modified updated every hour or so.

I guess I'll have a better answer when it stops updating that Date Modified! But I do expect it will complete the task. I just wish it had a progress bar.

The library is a 345 GB file, so maybe that's unusual for Photos.

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