Why are Photos.app photo counts so different between iOS and MacOS?
Recently I created a new, totally empty Photos library as a dedicated library for my iPhone photos. I have a couple DSLR cameras and I do a lot more editing and organizing with those photos, and I wanted to keep things separate. Currently, the Photos iOS app says that I have "15,963 Photo, 765 Videos".
So, with a brand new library, I connected my iPhone and started importing everything. There were a couple times during The Big Import where it would stop importing, a dialogue would appear saying "XXXX items weren't able to import..." because of "Image Capture Error -9934". The first time this happened after only about 5000 items were imported. At that point I clicked OK, disconnect my iPhone, reconnect, and then start importing again. I think it happened twice during the process, if I remember correctly.
Each time I would reconnect my phone, Photos would take a minute to recalculate all of the "already imported" items, and early on I noticed that the counts were off, by many thousands of photos. It seemed weird, I thought maybe it was a problem with those errors I was getting? But, I powered through, got "everything" imported and then did a final check on the counts...
I looked up a couple of articles and did a full rebuild of the library. That didn't help at all. The interesting thing is that in some ways the numbers are WAY OFF and it some ways they are only slightly off. As you can see from the screenshots up there, the number of "already imported" items is nearly 10,000 more than the items in the Photos library. Like whaaaat? I also double checked the data usage bar graph thing in iTunes. You know, you connect your iPhone, click on that, click on "Summary", and then at the bottom it shows you how much storage is being used for each category, and currently it says that "Photos" are "139.72GB, 25,808 photos". And than number doesn't even line up with the "already imported" number from MacOS Photos, which is 25,820.
So, those numbers are different and WAY off of what I'm seeing on my phone. But if compare more directly between what I am seeing in iOS Photos vs MacOS Photos:
Photos Library (count listed at the bottom):
iOS -> 15,693 Photos, 765 Videos
MacOS -> 15,713 Photos, 766 Videos
MEDIA TYPES:
I got the iOS numbers by going to Photos app, taping on "Albums" at the bottom, then scrolling down to the "Media Types". I got the MacOS numbers by going to Photos app, clicking the "Media Types" arrow, clicking on each section, then cmd+A in that section, and reading the "XXX items selected" in the top right corner.
Videos
iOS -> 762
MacOS -> 763
Selfies
iOS -> 956
MacOS -> 522
Live Photos
iOS -> 113
MacOS -> 115
Potrait
iOS -> 1,703
MacOS -> 1,699
Panoramas
iOS -> 209
MacOS -> 229
Time-Lapse
iOS -> 30
MacOS -> 30
Slo-mo
iOS -> 31
MacOS -> 31
Bursts
iOS -> 279
MacOS -> 276
Screenshots
iOS -> 653
MacOS -> 653
Animated
iOS -> 4
MacOS -> 4
As you can see, in some cases the count is spot on, in some cases it's off by only a few, in some cases it is off by 15 or 20, and Selfies is off by 400. WTF?! It's really all over the place.
The count that is still the most surprising to me is the "already imported" count in MacOS Photos and the usage count from iTunes. MacOS Photos it is saying that I have _indeed_ imported everything from my phone. There are ZERO "new items" to import, but still somehow the count there is just about 10,000 more items than are on my phone or listed in my MacOS Photos app library.
My goal here is to get everything on my phone imported correctly and then delete all the photos on my phone. I've got nearly 140GB of photos / videos on my phone and I want to back up everything in MacOS Photos and then delete them all so I can free up some space on my phone. But, right now, I don't know if I trust that I have everything imported correctly.
Thoughts? Concerns? HALP! <3
Here's my hardware specs...
MacBook Pro (Early 2015)
MacOS (Mojave 10.14.5)
Photos (4.0 (3451.7.120))
iTunes (Version 12.9.5.5)
iPhone 11 Pro (iOS 13.2)
iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 13
