Since upgrading to Catalina, Photos won't import photos from my iPhone. The progress bar will move across giving the impression something is happening; however, once finished, not a single photo was imported to the library.
Anyone else experiencing this issue? Any solutions???
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
I can confirm the problems stems from Photos having trouble importing photos/videos directly from the iPhone. I found a workaround:
Before I found this workaround, I used Image Capture to preview all the photos from my iPhone and when I tried to drag these iPhone photos to Photos, guess what, Photos crashes. I can recreate this crash again and again.
This bug is ridiculous given importing photos is such a fundamental function of Photos. So the team at Apple, please look into this without further delay. BTW my iPhone X and 2013 MacBook Air are all on the latest OS and my Photos library is stored on an external HDD.
Its not just the external drive issue. I changed my library to the system library on my Mac and still have the same issue, Cannot import photos from any device into photo library. I've rebooted, reset locations, repaired the library, etc. Nothing solves the issue.
Not allowing the storing of a photo library on a NAS actually put users at risk of data loss. I had a few incidents where the external hard disk suddenly failed and I had to scramble to save data from the disk before it completely failed. After a few times of such nightmare, I invested in a Synology NAS solution to ensure the photo library is safely stored. So threatening users not to use a network storage is really not wise.
Before Catalina, I've had the Photos library on a NAS via MacMini for years with absolutely no issues. I suspect here that Apple is trying to push their Photos on iCloud to limit storage possibilities via NAS. What's the difference between the cloud and a NAS, anyway? There are thousands of users with photos on NAS out there using other photo programs...why not Photos? Really silly.
I would never use iCloud, speed is one issue and it's never gonna be enough for space for my 10+ years of videos and photos. I was so happy after setting up NAS for my photo library but now Apple has broken it.
How can this be true. Apple pioneered photo storage over wifi networks with time capsule and airport. I've been using a similar setup for a long time now. Modern PC usage almost demands network storage because the hard drives in small laptops cannot hold all the data. Virtually every Macbook now must store photos over a wifi network.
Like all others I used this Application for years in combination with a NAS. After the upgrade to Cataline the import process seems to perform an action, but nothing happens. So far non of the recommendations provided here solved this issue for me.
These things are really worrying ... the most important reason to pay 3x more than for a non Apple system was the stability, performance, ingenious implementations and great looks, but now in 2020 these reasons start to apply less and less ... and to be honest, I am in the middle in deciding to upgrade both my iMac and iPhone ... once no need to consider e.g. windows and android or Chinese brands, etc but hmmm, why pay too much for the same non-satisfying software?
Apple: fire some of your marketing, sales and management people, stop outsourcing to semi-slaves in cheap labour regions expecting you get the same quality, and use your endless amount of money to do something good again for your customers ... and soon.
Setting System Photo Library did not work for me (using Samba network drive).
The behaviour is that after had selected photos to import the application come back to the photos list instead of importing iphone photos.
Apple, this problem has been posted on Oct 17, 2019 3:27 PM.
Now, 3 months later there's not even a serious reply from Apple support on this? Your company is worth $1.3 Trillion, get serious, you could hire all IT staff in the world ... even though it just requires one extra support member to at least communicate about this issue. What's your problem, really.
Do you expect me to have 120GB of photos on a 500GB SSD??? Or to pay $9.99 monthly for 2TB cloud storage? Well you won't trick me into that would feel like a big scam.
I have the same issue. After upgrading to Catalina, I cannot import iPhone photos. I'm using NAS for my Photos Library.
I'm having the same issue too. Import photos simply doesn't work after upgrading to Catalina.
Upgraded to Catalina 10.15.1 - still having issue. I am not able to import to Photos from iPhone.
Same here. Was hopeful macOS 10.15.1/iOS 13.2 would hold the fix, but no such luck. I guess Apple isn't listening.
I guess you can't expect much for a $4000 laptop/$1500 smartphone... 🙄
Hello. Have you gotten any improvement with other Photos feature (like importing photos from iPhone) after setting the System Photo Library as mentioned?
This is not the venue for replies from Apple, except for a few canned info replies from the moderators. Almost everybody here is just a user, trying to help other users.
Thx Markwmsn for this feedback. Will not use this anymore for addressing Apple.
Catalina: can't import iPhone photos
