iPhone 18 Pro photos display vertical lines after syncing

If the photos in question are very old JPEGs, the files may have become damaged by JPEG corruption or there are transmission errors because a damaged cable connection. A JPEG is a compressed file without no redundancy, so a single flipped bit can cause complete blocks to be missing.

If the images have been stored on an old external drive that might have bad blocks or is failing JPEG files can get corrupted. You may want to look on your other disk drives, if you are having older backup copies of the files that cannot be transferred and if these files are still readable.

I am occasionally using the app Corrupt JPEG Checker to scan all my JPEGS and check, if one of them got corrupted. Over the years I have found roughly hundred image files that needed restoring from older backups.

In this user tip are some examples what damaged JPEGs might look like: Corrupted Originals, the Insidious Danger… - Apple Community

For some of the damaged files I had to fall back on the backups of my oldest iPhoto Libraries to recover the originals.

I have tested many things. I am back to using iTunes. I did a forced restart of my iPad 18 Pro. I deleted the iPod Photo Cache file. I have finally gotten my iPhone 18 Pro and my iPad

Mini 7 to sync properly. Thanks for all of your help.

jofola wrote:…I just do a reboot, not a forced restart.

Be sure to try a forced re-start. I sometimes fixes things.

You might also try opening the pictures in an app in Windows, and then saving new copies, and try those. You would be making a fresh compression that might work better on the phone.

Sometimes even making a duplicate will clear up some damage to the files.

It really sounds like the format of the pictures is not being properly interpreted.

I don't know much about using Windows, but I bet it would be good to know:

• What is the format of the transferred picture? HEIC? jpg? Have you tried changing this?
• How are you doing this transfer? Do you use the Apple Devices app?
• Are you using Windows 11?
• Do you use iCloud Photos on your iPhone?
• Do you use Optimize Storage on your iPhone?
• By "rebooting … the iPhone" do you mean that you used a forced re-start?

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

This is different from a simple Power Off. For me, the logo appears  5 or 10 seconds past the "slide to power off" message. Wait for the logo; don't do the slide thing. 

• What is your storage on this iPhone? At Settings>General>iPhone Storage, my phone says 50.5 GB of 128 GB used. What does yours say?

Let us know--someone should have answers…

Thanks for your reply.

The format is mainly jpeg. There are about 10,000 pictures involved. Some may be other formats.

I have been using iTunes. I have just tried the Apple Devices App and did not get better results.

I use Windows 11.

I do not use iCloud to store my computer photos. I have about 100,000 photos on my phone. Many were taken before there were digital cameras or digital phones. I don't want to store all of them on iCloud although I might do so if I have to.

I just do a reboot, not a forced restart.

My phone is a 256 GB phone. I use about 100 GB.

As I previously mentioned, I got better results with my iPhone 17 Pro than my new iPhone 18 Pro. I don't know whether the higher resolution screen of the 18 Pro is part of the problem. The pictures displayed as vertical lines are mainly lower resolution ones. All of the other information (size, map location, etc.) about the picture is presented correctly.

I hope this information helps.

Interesting. Deleting the iPod Photo Cache file probably did it. That is where the corrupted items may have been hidden.