Albums in Photos still not syncing

[stephenschimpf]

I updated my iMac, iPhone, and iPad Pro this morning, sorted the albums in Photos the way I want on my iMac, and the albums are still in a different order on my iPhone and iPad Pro. The album order used to be synced before the upgrade to Catalina, and after several updates to both iOS and macOS, the syncing remains broken. Ugh.

 

[Deadeyeshark]

Finding the same here, although I’m allowing Catalina to sync, may take some time with 120k photos. If that doesn’t work I’ll try a repair. If that doesn’t work hopefully 10.15.3 will sort it.

Also wondering if a reinstall of Catalina may fix it.

 

[stephenschimpf]

If that doesn’t work I’ll try a repair.

It worked, but not permanently! I performed a repair of the Photos library on my iMac, which took maybe 10 minutes, and when I checked my iPhone and iPad Pro was happy to see that the albums were now in the same order as on my iMac!

However, I then created a new album in Photos on my iMac, which appears at the top of the list, and then manually moved it down so that's it sorted alphabetically. When I later checked my iPhone and iPad Pro, I found that new album at the top of the list of albums. It had not moved down.

So, repairing the library on the iMac does cause the album order on the iPhone and iPad Pro to sync, but they don't stay synced if you create new albums.

 

[Deadeyeshark]

Yeah the repair did not work. Curious, did you upgrade from Mojave? Im kind of wondering if a fresh install of Catalina might be the way forward, as painful as that might be. I’ll probably wait for 10.15.3 and if that doesn’t solve the problem then I’ll do a full wipe and reinstall.

 

[stephenschimpf]

Yeah the repair did not work. Curious, did you upgrade from Mojave? Im kind of wondering if a fresh install of Catalina might be the way forward, as painful as that might be. I’ll probably wait for 10.15.3 and if that doesn’t solve the problem then I’ll do a full wipe and reinstall.

Yes, I upgraded from Mojave.

 

[Deadeyeshark]

Another option could be to set up a new system library, not sure if anyone has tried this, I'm hesitant to do so simply because I don't know if this will get rid of my photos in the cloud when it syncs up to the new blank system library. If it downloads the existing iCloud photos then all good, has anyone had any experience of doing this?