iPhone SE photos not syncing to Mac mini M2 via Photos app

Thank you very much all folks for replying! Sorry, I'm 74 years old and with long covid, and bad hands. It takes along time for me to enter & voice doesn't work for me.

Info: M2 Mac Mini Pro (2023) 16GB, running MacOS Sequoia 15.4 when I originally sent this. (Now 15.4.1).

999.64GB on the HD, 803GB free.

When I noticed this a few days ago, no photos had been entered into the Mac mini since November 2024. That was right before I got Covid and long covid, but I don't recall anything unusual.

The issue that caused my notice was I received a message on my iPhone, but not on my Mac mini that had a jpg photo on my Greatgrandparents/grandparents headstone. I tried to save it and nothing happened with any messages from the iPhone that it had been saved, so I tried airdrop from iPhone to Mac mini, and that got the photo to the desktop. From there I attempted to copy into Photos in the dock, and nothing happened and I realized that some other photos I had taken with the iPhone were not in Photos, and saw that it was about 4000 photos and 6 months out of fate (nothing after November 2024.)

I just attempted (17 Apr 1930 EDT)to save this jpeg photo of the headstone from my iPhone (From Messages there to Save and have a message that the phot has already been saved to my iCloud Photo Library. I have no idea where that library is, or how to access it.)

Today, opening Photos from the dock, it has "Utilities" with 7 albums in collections, specifically: duplicates, receipts, handwriting, illustrations, recently viewed, documents, and imported; with about 4 to 400 photos in each; no videos. At the time of my original message, it had about 26k & 1500 or so videos. My iPhone SE (2022) has 30651 photos & about 1500 videos. My new iPad 10th Generation (64GB,IOS 18.4)(purchased and opened four days ago has 30651 photos & 1977 videos. That iPad replaced an iPad 5th Generation (32GB, which has 30100 photos, 12000 "recovered photos" in a different album.

My iCloud Drive shows no photos.

The finder Ribbon shows "Pictures" with a series of various jpeg photos and a PhotosLibrary.photoslibrary with 20.35GB updated today, AND a PhotosLibrary1.photoslibrary with 14.42GB updated today.

Any help you can give this, I greatly appreciate it.

Chuck

Just replied now. Sorry, it takes me a long time to process and follow. It even takes me a half hour to find a sign email and password that Apple will accept! I have not restarted, or tried to start in safe mode. It will take me the rest of the evening to shut down Time Machine, 3 separate HDDs of Carbon Copy Cloner, an OWC MiniStack with two backup disks, and my finicky printers that require many efforts to restart. I will try both suggestions and respond on Friday 18 April.

Thanks once again.

I will try both suggestions and I believe I provided detailed information to markwmsn. But it will take me until Friday (18 April) to turn off all the backups (Time Machine, CCC, I have) and try.

thanks for helping.

Yes, I restarted. No change then I shut down and start it again no change. Then I shut down restarted in safe mode. Checked to make sure that the report indicated the computer wasn't safe mode. No change still just the strange thing of seven folders that I never seen before with only a few hundred pictures. I shut down and restart it in normal mode. Still the same.

Thanks for helping. I don't know Arabic, and don't know if there is a translate function in MacOS Sequoia.

Chuck