dso371

Q: Photos app keeps importing same photos

Hi all, I hope someone can help with this annoying problem...

 

On my Macbook Air, running El Capitan (and Yosemite before), whenever I connect my iPad Air 2 or my iPhone 6 Plus, the Photos app imports the same photos again and again.

 

I think, from inspecting them, that there isn't much or any overlap between the set of photos it keeps importing on the iPad and the set it keeps importing on the iPhone. But for each device, it's the same set of photos again and again.

 

I import them every time since I'm worried about maybe losing them if I don't, but they never show up as endless duplicates in the photo library. There's just one copy of each.

 

And lately I'm seeing error messages on import along the lines of 'couldn't load assets', with several files with a .peg extension, and 'file may be corrupt' or some such.

 

I've repaired the photo library on the Mac several times, but the problem persists. Not sure what else to do. Is it something with the photo libraries on the iOS devices? I've set them to optimise storage so neither device stores the full original image. Is there a way of clearing them out on the iOS devices and downloading again from iCloud?

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you,

David

OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 24, 2015 9:20 AM

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Q: Photos app keeps importing same photos

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  • by Jordan Taylor,

    Jordan Taylor Jordan Taylor Oct 31, 2015 8:18 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 31, 2015 8:18 PM in response to dso371

    Same thing started happening to me on my Macbook Pro. Updated to El Capitan in the last week. When I connect iPhone 6, about 40 photos/videos that have already been imported try importing again, and a number of them fail to import with the message "couldn't load an asset".

     

    What I've noticed: This only happens to photos and videos others took and sent to me; no pictures I've taken are trying to import dupes. Unlike dso371, the duplicates that don't fail to import do in fact show up in the library. Some of the duplicate videos that imported show up as videos (with the correct icon etc.), but wouldn't play, so don't delete your previous copies! The other thing is that duplicate imported videos that were taken with an iPhone5S (and sent to my iPhone6, but already had copies on my Macbook) now have .h264 in their 'get info' above the camera icon, whereas the original imports don't. I assume that has something to do with why they're not being detected as already there.

     

    Not sure if it's related, but my iPhone appears to be trying to upload all photos to my iCloud library, again, even though they're already there. Despite this, my iCloud library doesn't seem to be getting the duplicates.

  • by hlovatt,

    hlovatt hlovatt Nov 29, 2015 7:36 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iLife
    Nov 29, 2015 7:36 PM in response to dso371

    Same problem for me - really annoying. Also it only occurs for photos from other people.

  • by marianneka,

    marianneka marianneka Jan 18, 2016 6:39 PM in response to hlovatt
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 18, 2016 6:39 PM in response to hlovatt

    Hi all,

     

     

    Yep, same story, on my Macbook Pro, running El Capitan (and Yosemite before), whenever I connect my iPhone 6S, the Photos app imports the same photos repeatedly. My original photos are duplicating & I can verify I have 4 copies of each original photos, in ADDITION TO HDR copies. I have turned off HDR to prevent any HDR duplicates.

     

    This seems to be an ongoing problem with PHOTOS. I am at an Apple Retail store in Sydney, & there does not seem to be a known way to prevent this. HELP PLEASE!!!

  • by wealthychef,

    wealthychef wealthychef Jan 24, 2016 12:21 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jan 24, 2016 12:21 PM in response to dso371

    I'm just replying to keep this thread alive.  I don't know why Apple hasn't addressed this problem.  What happened to insanely great products?  Photos.app has so many little bugs and annoyances, e.g., doesn't even know about events any more like iPhotos used to, cannot drag and drop photos from my albums into other applications (have to put on the desktop first), and beyond that, it seems to be getting the Mail.app treatment, meaning it will never get any better over time and bugs will just persist forever without any comment.  They probably are down to a single developer on it. 

  • by dpcrook,

    dpcrook dpcrook Feb 20, 2016 2:23 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 20, 2016 2:23 PM in response to dso371

    +1 this has been affecting my ipads and iphones for sometime.

    Along with the fix on the import, it would be good if there was a feature/tool introduced to remove the duplicated imported files from the Photos.library-- as the duplicated videos and imaages just waste space...

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Feb 20, 2016 2:33 PM in response to dpcrook
    Level 10 (85,113 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Feb 20, 2016 2:33 PM in response to dpcrook

    TO tell Apple things use this form - http://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

     

    and for duplicates look at PowerPhotos -

     

    LN

  • by wealthychef,

    wealthychef wealthychef Feb 20, 2016 3:27 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Feb 20, 2016 3:27 PM in response to LarryHN

    Nice to be able to remove duplicates, but nicer if Apple would fix this glaring bug.  I'm sure there are many more people with this problem that don't know about this forum.  It is very frustrating dealing with Apple when something breaks, as they really don't do much to help.  Just silence. 

  • by daveth859,

    daveth859 daveth859 Feb 22, 2016 12:47 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 22, 2016 12:47 PM in response to dso371

    +1

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Apr 2, 2016 11:29 PM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 2, 2016 11:29 PM in response to dso371

    UGH!!!!

    Same problem.

     

    I don't trust iCloud to securely store my photos. I don't trust Photos to work on my Mac. I no longer use my iPhone or iPad to take or view photos anymore. Seriously, this problem has brought using iCloud and Photos to a halt for me. For some reason, this problem has not carried over to my iPhone.

     

    Every time I plug in my iPad to sync it, Photos claims I have anywhere from 857 - 1,436 new photos to import. I have NO new photos. These "new" photos are already in iCloud (I checked through Safari and iCloud on the web; I checked on my devices and computer).


    If I import these "new" photos, I have duplicates. I also have LOTS of photos that won't import because they are supposedly PEG files (this is some sort of game I have no clue about and have never owned or used). Maybe they're JPEGs that lost the "J" (I'm grasping at straws now). The kicker is that when I plug in my iPad again, Photos claims that most of the photos I imported are new again. I now have THOUSANDS of duplicates that I need to sift through - I HATE this.

     

    I've tried going back to a factory reset on the iPad, but the problem remains - maybe because I restored my iPad from a backup?

     

    I've tried turning iCloud photos on the iPad on/off, syncing, resetting the iPad, all in every possible combination I can think of.

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Apr 4, 2016 1:07 PM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 4, 2016 1:07 PM in response to oskarmatzerath

    UPDATE: This is now happening on my iPhone.


    FYI: Forgot to mention equipment info: Mac Pro (El Capitan 10.11.4); iPad Air 2 (iOS 9.3.1); iPhone 6s (iOS 9.3.1)

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Apr 6, 2016 12:50 AM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 6, 2016 12:50 AM in response to oskarmatzerath

    UPDATE 2:

     

    Another failed attempt:

     

    I spoke to an Apple employee at the store, who said they weren't able to really help because they couldn't see the syncing process. He did recommend that I turn off Photos on both my iPad and iPhone, sync them, back them up, and check to be sure they didn't have any connection to photos in the cloud. Once that was done, I deleted all photos remaining on both devices. Again with the syncing, backing up, and restarting the devices. At the moment of truth when I went to sync my iPad and check the Photos app, I was again asked to import over 1,000 photos that I know are already in the cloud.

     

    I don't know if this is important, but I just realized a discrepancy between the number of photos on my iPad and what's in iCloud. My iPad has 22,837 images, whereas the cloud has only 20,276.

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Apr 6, 2016 2:24 AM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 6, 2016 2:24 AM in response to oskarmatzerath

    UPDATE 2:

     

    Another failed attempt:

     

    I spoke to an Apple employee at the store, who said they weren't able to really help because they couldn't see the syncing process. He did recommend that I turn off Photos on both my iPad and iPhone, sync them, back them up, and check to be sure they didn't have any connection to photos in the cloud. Once that was done, I deleted all photos remaining on both devices. Again with the syncing, backing up, and restarting the devices. At the moment of truth when I went to sync my iPad and check the Photos app, I was again asked to import over 1,000 photos that I know are already in the cloud.

     

    Backing up my iPad is taking over 2 hours. Is this related?

  • by oskarmatzerath,

    oskarmatzerath oskarmatzerath Apr 6, 2016 5:16 PM in response to oskarmatzerath
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 6, 2016 5:16 PM in response to oskarmatzerath

    UPDATE 3:

     

    My iPhone 6s is now affected. I just imported 86 photos that are part of the same group of photos I keep importing from my iPad. I haven't been deleting the photos, so I now have 3,000+ duplicates.

  • by rabbitman,

    rabbitman rabbitman Apr 9, 2016 7:47 AM in response to dso371
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Apr 9, 2016 7:47 AM in response to dso371

    Yeap. Confirmed is happening to me as well. I also have a failed import window popup for a specific file I have no idea where to check. This is bad, Apple! Bad. Apple developer, if you need stuff on my Mac to solve the problem, let me know. I'm willing to help, but please fix it. This is getting annoying.

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