Photos Keeps Importing Photos Already Imported

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Photos Keeps Importing Photos Already Imported

For quite a while now, WhatsApp photos sent to me and then stored in photos on my iPhone or screen shot videos, will not register as imported on the Photos app on my MacBook. When I plug my phone in and import there are no problems and all photos or videos import to photos. Next time I plug my phone into my Mac and import they flag up as not imported and import again. If I don't notice this I can end up with 10 copies of the same image in photos. The only way I can stop this is to delete the images from photos on my iPhone. I've tried to repair my photo library on my Mac and it's completed without issues. I'm not sure if it's down to these other files having long or unfamiliar names. When I click info on them all the information appears identical, yet they keep on importing and duplicating. Is there some glitch here I just have to put up with or is there a fix please?

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Feb 21, 2021 3:00 PM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

200,639 points

Feb 22, 2021 3:51 AM in response to mmbuk

Do you have an app installed on your iPhone that can show you the filenames of the photos on your iPhone? For example "Metapho" is very useful to find out the details of a photo, like the filename, filename extension, or codec. You could also use "Investigate" or "ViewExif". Once installed on the iPhone, you can launch them from the Share menu.

If you have such an app, compare the filenames on the iPhone to the imported files on your Mac. Is there a difference?

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Answer 2

Feb 21, 2021 3:15 PM in response to mmbuk

The files will be changed in some way as they are imported into your mac. Then they are not recognised as the same file.

The most likey reason is characters in the filename which are not allowed on the mac photos, and so are stripped out.

Other possibilities could be incompatible file formats which are converted.

Your options are

to find out what is causing this and fix it on the phone before import,
to delete the photos on the phone once imported,
to manually deselect them for import during the import process.
delete them from the imports folder after import.

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Photos Keeps Importing Photos Already Imported

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