Issues with my iPhone and Macbook

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Level 1

4 points

Issues with my iPhone and Macbook

When I plug in my iPhone to my Macbook so I can import photos, I keep getting the message Preparing to Import from Nancy's iPhone and then it tells me to Unlock my iPhone, which is unlocked. Sometimes I can get this to stop and actually use iPhotos and get some photos downloaded, but it takes a long time to get this to stop. iPhoto will give me a greyed out iPhone under devices, but then it goes away, and comes back again. I have never like iPhoto in the first place and Apple is making me use this right now because I haven't gotten Lightroom or another better software. I used Aperture for years and loved it.

On another note with the same issue, my Mackbook does not seem to recognize my iPhone is connected to the computer.

Is there a way to get iPhotos to work?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Dec 13, 2020 2:46 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

TonyCollinet

Level 7

23,861 points

Dec 13, 2020 3:39 PM in response to strong

The problem seems to be primarily that your Macbook is not recognising the phone properly. If the mac can't recognise the phone, then neither can photos.

1 - try different lightning cables and USB ports on the mac.

2 - try force restarting your iphone.

As a short term workaround, try using the image capture app to download images to your mac.

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Answer 2

Dec 13, 2020 3:45 PM in response to strong

Are you using iPhotos app or the newer Photos app which was launched in 2015. I don't mean to be pedantic, but if you are using iPhotos and have a newish iPhone, this may be the cause of your problem.

Photos.app should work fine and whilst not quite as powerful as Aperture is a lot close in functionality to it than iPhotos.

When you plug the phone into your MacBook, is it showing up in the sidebar in Finder and can you access the other media on your phone?

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Answer 3

strong Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 20, 2020 12:56 PM in response to TonyCollinet

I tried a different USB port on my computer and that worked. I would have never thought about that. Thank you!

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Issues with my iPhone and Macbook

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