iPhone Syncing Photo Albums from Mac to iPhone

[Hrothgar]

Am I the only one who thinks that they've made the Photos app ridiculously confusing and messy?
Oh well.
My problem of the moment is that the Favorites album on my Mac Mini (Sequoia 15.5) is different from the Favorites album on the Photos app of my iPhone (ios 18.5). When I sync the phone, I click the box for "Favorites" at the top of the list. But it's not pulling over that album.

I get the idea that each device has its own Favorites album. Is there a way to have a single, shared Favorites album, so I can just click the heart on a picture and it goes into Favorites on both devices?

 

[adrianlondon]

It seems you're not using iCloud photos.

My understanding is that favourites only sync via iCloud, not by connecting the phone and using iTunes/Finder.

 

[Hrothgar]

It seems you're not using iCloud photos.

My understanding is that favourites only sync via iCloud, not by connecting the phone and using iTunes/Finder.

I'm not using iCloud. When I used iCloud, it automatically sent a copy of every picture i took, but in lower resolution, to my devices. Then when I synced the phone, I ended up with a second copy, and I had to go through and delete all the duplicates.

 

[adrianlondon]

I'm not using iCloud. When I used iCloud, it automatically sent a copy of every picture i took, but in lower resolution, to my devices. Then when I synced the phone, I ended up with a second copy, and I had to go through and delete all the duplicates.

I have iCloud sync on for photos, and when I sync my phone, it won't further sync the photos as it knows I have photos in the cloud enabled.

Unfortunately, I think it won't sync favourites your way. A workaround would be to add all your favourites to another album (e.g. "My Favourites") which I assume would then sync. You could create an automation to do that daily/regularly.

 

[Hrothgar]

My syncing seems to be all screwed up. For example, I synced an album from my Mini onto my phone. The next time I connected the phone to the Mini, and it imported the new photos, it brought in all the photos from the album. Now they're in my library twice. (Perhaps more.)

 

[sgtaylor5]

I’ve got an idea: even though an album is a virtual representation of a collection of photos, think of an album as a folder and not as a tag. Any photo should only reside in one album and not multiple albums. that may solve your duplication problem.

That happened with libraries on Windows 7: I had some clients who would put multiple definitions of their photos folder in the photos library by accident. then they would have “three copies of everything” shown when really they only had one photo.