Cannot get any photos of my iPhone with image capture

I have a fix!

1. Lock the iPhone.
2. Plug the iPhone (locked), into the Mac.
3. Open Image Capture (it will ask you to unlock your iPhone)
4. Unlock the iPhone
5. Enjoy Image Capture as it loads your camera roll!

I had the same issue, the steps above helped me solve it. Hope it helps you too!

Hi, I just had this issue and see that you haven't gotten an answer

I just fixed this issue.

I HAD image capture set to automatically open when I plug in my phone and I got your same error message.

While image capture is open with my phone plugged in, I clicked the three dots in the top control bar, and selected "no application" when plugging in my iphone

Then, I closed image capture, unplugged and plugged back in my iPhone, and then launched image capture and it now works.

Hello! I had the same issue... after looking into preferences and clicking different buttons I found a way that may work for you. In Image Capture, there's a circle with 3 dots. That's the "what should we open when you connect your iphone?" button. It originally was photos. I changed it to Image Capture. I unplugged my phone and tried again. It worked. So hopefully you haven't tried it and that it'll work for you. *fingers crossed*

YO! I have been struggling with this error for months. I found ways around it, by using a Sandisk lightning usb drive and all that, but that also started having problems. I finally found my problem: I had to clean out my lightning port. I feel so dumb for not thinking of it, but when there's pocket lint in your lightning port, the cable can't fully plug in or the contacts get interrupted. I used a safety pin to get the lint out and it worked just like magic. Not sure if this will work for you, but it sure as heck solved the same issue for me.

The hotspot fix does not work. What worked for me is:

* unlock the phone

* plug it in

* carefully sent to any “trust” messages

* open Photos app

* wait a (very) long time while it says “preparing to download photos from iPhone”. 10 minutes in my case (about 12,000 photos camera roll).

One Photos gets it, so does Image Capture and Lightroom and other apps.

I just came across this as well. What I noticed is that since everything is USB C nowadays, I didn't have this issue and it is happening since I am using an adapter. I assume you are in the same boat. What I did was connect the adaptor first then connect the phone. Nothing else in this thread worked. I guess what other thing you can do is use a USB C cable to eliminate any adaptor issues. Hope this helps. Good luck!

how do you connect your iphone? Do you use a cable lightning to usb c? Or are you using an adapter and the use the standard charging cable (lightning to usb A)? Are you using wifi for connecting the phone?

I can confirm that this worked for me:

I connected the iphone using a usb cable to my M1. Then I shut doen the M1 via the Apple menu/shut down or reboot and leave everything connected. After boot/reboot I opened ImageCapture and then the system asked to unlock the phone.

Hope it helps. I haven’t tested through wifi though. (I prefer cables in general)

regards, Jos

I've found a consistent fix for me - simply keep the phone plugged in and reboot your M1 Mac. I have to do this every time I need to connect it. This bug definitely needs to be fixed, but hopefully, this workaround works for others.

I was able to fix this by un-plugging the USB-C cable from my Mac mini (While my phone was connected to the lightning cable end) and re-inserting the USB-C end into the Mac mini. Image capture recognized the phone and allowed me to transfer photos/movies after I did this. Mac mini • Big Sur 11.3 • iPhone 11 Pro • IOS 14.6

I realize its been a great while but I wanted to add my experience in the hopes this helps you. Take these steps.

• Reboot everything.
• Use a new iPhone cable in a different port. <--Seriously I have one that I keep new JUST for this.

They seem to melt over time because of too much heat and they don't function or connect well after just a few months of usage. They have very cheap quality cables now so you have to have a very lightly used new cable for it to work properly for data transfer. (This isn't Apple hate this is personal experience from my decades of Apple product usage.)

M1 Mac Mini, Big Sur 11.4, 12 Pro Max. Same problem. The solution of "restart Mac while phone is plugged in" worked. I can now load photos into Lightroom Classic.

Thanks,

to clarify, I can regularly get image capture to work if I play it into a USB4 port and also have “no application” selected on the app auto open option in image capture

In case people come across this page, turning off my iPhones hotspot did the trick for me. "Allow Others To Join" -> Off

I had this problem too!! It's actually a weird and easy solution, if you plug your cord in on the left side of your mac it shows up as: "could not open a connection to the device module," but if you plug it into the USB port on the right side it connects! Hopefully that works for you :)