Apple Watch provides some nifty features when it comes to incorporating your own photos.
These include personalizing your watch faces with your favorite photos and accessing your favorite albums directly on your Apple Watch.
Unfortunately, some users have found that they cannot locate their synced photos on their Apple Watch or their watch is missing some of their albums or favorite photos.
In this short article, we outline some tips that help you sync your iPhone’s photos to your Apple Watch.
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Apple Watch missing photos? How to fix
On Apple Watches, you should be able to browse selected photos in the Watch’s Photos app and show a photo on your watch face.
Due to its limited storage, you cannot view all your photos on your Apple Watch. Instead, Apple allows you to choose a single Photos app album (the default is your Favorites album) to showcase on your watch’s Photos app. Your watch also shows your featured photos and your Memories.
You can add up to 500 photos to your watch. The number of photos stored on your Apple Watch depends on its available space.
Before you start, open the watch’s Control Center and make sure your Watch isn’t in Airplane mode and confirm that your watch connects to your iPhone. 
You should see a green phone icon at the top of the control center, and Airplane mode should be grayed out.
- Launch the Watch app on your iPhone and select the My Watch tab from the bottom.
- Now, Scroll down and locate the Photos app.
- Turn off Photo Syncing.
- Wait 10-20 seconds, then toggle Photo Syncing back on.
- Scroll down to the Album section and tap Photos Limit. If the Sync Album listed is not correct, tap it and choose the album you want to store on your Apple Watch.
- Increase your limit to 250 or 500.
- Go back and turn on Sync Memories and Sync Featured Photos. This automatically syncs your featured photos and Memories from the photos app library on your iPhone.
- Restart your Apple Watch.
The steps above should help force a sync for your photos between your Apple Watch and your paired iPhone.
This process also works for watch faces. Sometimes you add new watch faces using the watch app on your iPhone and won’t be able to locate the faces on your Apple Watch.
Forcing a sync on the Photos side of things usually brings up the missing watch faces.
Apple Watch and Photos tips and tricks
Given that we are discussing the Photos feature on the Apple Watch, we wanted to highlight a couple of useful tips in this area.
If you have not explored the Photos app feature on your Apple Watch, we recommend checking out some of the articles below.
Add photo complications via a third-party app
Third-party app Photo Complications is an app you must check out for your Apple Watch.
This app allows you to select your favorite photos and have them show up as complications on your Watch face.
Tap on your fav photo on the watch face, and it fills up the screen. The app is easy to use and has the following features. 
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- Add images from your Photos library, iCloud, other apps, or a URL.
- Tap to go fullscreen with an optional title.
- Show random images every hour.
- JPEG, PNG, JPG, BMP, and GIF (non-animated) image types are supported.
Change your iPhone’s camera orientation using your watch 
You can remotely change your iPhone’s camera orientation using your Apple Watch. If you have not tried the feature, check out the Camera Remote app on your Apple Watch.
With this app, you can use your Apple Watch to see what your iPhone camera shows as its image and even take a photo or video from your Watch.
The next time you are struggling to take a group photo with everyone accounted for ‘including you’, try out the Camera Remote app on your Apple Watch.
Unfortunately, the Camera Remote app only works between Apple Watch and iPhone, it does not work for your iPad’s camera app.
Changing the camera orientation is easy when using this app
- First, the Camera app should be open on your iPhone. Choose what type of photo you want to take (photo, portrait, pano) or select video, slo-mo, or time-lapse.
- Open the Camera Remote app and tap on the three dots icon next to the shutter button.
- Select the camera orientation between the front and rear cameras. For selfies, choose the Front camera. Scroll all the way up to turn a 3-second timer off or on.
- Scroll down for options for using the flash, turning live photos on or off, and choosing an HDR (high dynamic range) photo or not.
- Tap Done to save your options.
- When you’re ready to take your photo, press the shutter button or ask Siri to “take a picture.” If you set the 3-second timer, your iPhone camera shoots the picture with a 3-second delay to allow you to get ready and raise your eyes when you’re in the picture.
- To zoom in or out, turn the watch’s Digital Crown.
- To adjust the picture’s exposure, tap an area of the shot preview on your Apple Watch.
When you take a video, the watch remote shutter button changes to a red button and starts recording when you tap it once and then stops recording with another tap. 
When making a video, Apple limits your available options to using front or rear cameras and turning the flash on or off.
How to see how many photos are on your Apple Watch
- Open the Settings app on your Apple Watch Ultra, then go to General > About > Scroll down to Photos. Or open the Watch app on your iPhone >My Watch > General > About > Photos.
- To see how much space is used for your photos, open the Settings app on your Apple Watch > General > Storage > Photos. To do this on your iPhone, open the Watch app > My Watch > General > Storage > Photos.
Wrap up
We hope that you were able to sync your photos between your iPhone and Apple Watch using the tips.
Please feel free to share your favorite Apple Watch tip or two using the comments below!
