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iPad failure to sync because of Photos

In trying to sync my iPad to my iMac the process gets hung up for hours at step 5 of 6 "Reading Photos Library". I've run the "repair library" process, tried limiting the photos sync to only a few albums, tried "skip photos" during sync, but nothing breaks breaks the process beyond step 5. I am also unable to eject my iPad at that point. Disconnecting the iPad results in the sync process not even getting beyond "reading iPad" next time I connect. I have over 20,000 photos in my Photos library, some of which are referenced, so I don't know if that's causing the problem.

iPad Pro 11-inch Wi-Fi

Posted on Jan 13, 2022 2:17 PM

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Posted on Jan 17, 2022 1:07 PM

After spending around 90 minutes on the phone with a very helpful person in Apple support we finally found a workaround. We created a new library, imported only those albums that I wanted to sync into the new library, temporarily made the new library the system library, and then synced both my iPad and iPhone to my iMac. Although this was somewhat cumbersome it worked!! The best guess is that some of the originals were missing from the Photos library so the system got bogged down at that point and locked up the sync process to the point that I couldn't even eject my iPad.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 17, 2022 1:07 PM in response to allen ski

After spending around 90 minutes on the phone with a very helpful person in Apple support we finally found a workaround. We created a new library, imported only those albums that I wanted to sync into the new library, temporarily made the new library the system library, and then synced both my iPad and iPhone to my iMac. Although this was somewhat cumbersome it worked!! The best guess is that some of the originals were missing from the Photos library so the system got bogged down at that point and locked up the sync process to the point that I couldn't even eject my iPad.

iPad failure to sync because of Photos

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