Want to tell Finder to not sync photos while it is stuck synchronizing.

[Howard Brazee]

I've had problems synchronizing my IOS devices to my Mac forever, but it's been getting much worse lately.

I've upgraded my iMac and my iPhone in the last couple of months. I try turning them both off, but in the last couple of days I have not had a single time when the finder didn't get stuck with "Syncing Photos (Step 5 of 5) - Waiting for items to copy"

So I decided to try selecting the Photos tab and unchecking the "[ ]Sync photos to your device from: [Photos]".

It unchecks, but when I finally give up and kill the synchronizing, it is checked again.

I'm hoping to somehow uncheck this, synchronize, then check it again to see if that resolves this old, old problem that is now so much worse.

Any suggestions?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

How long have you left it at that state? It could take a while to finish the sync.

C

 

[Howard Brazee]

I think the longest attempt was something like 18 hours.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK...thanks.

Are you connecting them with a cable or syncing them wirelessly?

C

 

[Howard Brazee]

I use cables.

 

[XanMan]

I've run into this for years, and it makes me wonder why I spend a dollar for Mac equipment, let alone thousands. The fact they can't get basic synchronization right is mind boggling. Worse, they close threads and act like it's not an issue.

 

[Rodananne]

I think Apple would like us to use iCloud Photos Library which solves Howard's problem completely. The only down side to that is the storage space required to store the library for syncing purposes.
Personally since the sundowning of My Photo Stream some years ago I invested in iCloud Plus (iCloud+) which gives me 200GB of storage some other perks like Hide My Email and I enabled iCloud Photo Library.

iCloud+ with 200GB storage
200GB of storage

iCloud Private Relay

Hide My Email

Custom Email Domain

HomeKit Secure Video support for up to five cameras

Share everything with up to five other family members.

With that enabled on all my devices photos and videos are synced to all my devices wirelessly and no longer sync at all during the USB syncing process.



I use Family Sharing to share my 200GB plan with my wife meaning we only pay AU$3.50/month collectively.

In fact, with iCloud+ syncing via USB becomes almost redundant because I backup my iPhone to iCloud via iPhone settings every night.


My guess is that's the direction were going with rumours that Apple may eventually abandon the USB port on future iPhone models. entirely.