Problems syncing Photos -> iOS? Possible fix.

[mannyvel]

Every since moving to Big Sur/M1 I've been unable to sync Photos with my iOS devices. I get the dreaded "Your photos couldn't be synced because the photo library wasn't found."

Pretty much every tip online didn't work. In my case the problem seems to be that MacOS is unable to generate/sync the Photos library if there are other iOS devices mounted in the Finder.

By ejecting all my iOS devices except one I was finally able to sync Photos to my 12 mini.

What didn't work?
* manually deleting the iPod Photo Cache
* rebuilding the photo library (launch + option + command)
* changing permissions on the photo library

My library is a bit large (>4TB), so YMMV.

 

[darngooddesign]

I'm having the same issue and ejecting iOS devices doesnt work for me. My finder window does not list all my Photos albums. If I switch to a New Account the Finder window displays all the Photos Smart Folders and a new folder I created, which I assume means that the Sync would work.

My next attempt is to delete all the Syncing preferences, but where are those stored?

Regular User Account