Photo reimport already imported photos

Question

Level 1

11 points

Photo reimport already imported photos

Hi ! I imported all my 2021 photos on my mac from my iPhone, however I'm facing an issue I can't solve : Photos keeps seeing some photos as new while they're already imported.

So far here's what I've tried and identified :

Only pictures taken from message app while sending SMS / iMessage are affected. I diagnosed that thanks to the name of the picture : 2EB1C403-2B54-4902-A818-554FBB6[...].HEIC instead of IMG_XXXX.HEIC.
I checked my camera and photo settings. I'm using High Efficiency format and Keep Originals for the transfer option so this shouldn't be an issue
Both my mac and my iPhone are running on the latest OS release.
I'm using a genuine cable

I faced a similar issue previously and I fixed it by rebooting my mac, my iPhone and running a Photo library repair. This time none of these methods worked. I always end up with the same photos that are marked as new when I unplug / re-plug the iPhone after a successful import

I don't see what I can do more here to fix that :(

Thanks for your help

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jul 14, 2021 10:38 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

201,939 points

Jul 15, 2021 10:56 AM in response to neirdaa

When you import photos from an iPhone, there are two possible reasons why Photos may not be able to recognise some duplicates:

If you are using the High Efficiency and enabled a format conversion on import. You wrote that your iPhone is using "Keep Original", but check, if this option has not been changed by a system upgrade.
If you are using iCloud Photos or My Photo Stream on the iPhone, or if you have manually synced photos on the iPhone. Already imported photos can reappear as new photos again and again, it the iPhone keeps downloading them repeatedly from iCloud or other syncing services (iCloud Photos, My Photo Stream, Shared Albums, photos saved from other apps). If you are using any syncing service, that is downloading photos to the iPhone, you should select the new photos manually on import, as the syncing is writing new files to the iPhone.

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Answer 2

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Jul 15, 2021 9:16 AM in response to neirdaa

Hi neirdaa,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

We are happy to help with the issue you are having with Photos not recognizing all your imported photos. Thank you for providing all the steps you have already tried. Great steps and great information.

How are you importing your Photos? How are you importing the photos from your messages to your Photos library and to your Mac?

You can try to Start up your Mac in safe mode and see if the same thing happens.

You might also want to create a new user and test there as well. Learn how to Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac here. Let us know what happens when you try those steps.

Good luck!

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Answer 3

neirdaa Author

Level 1

11 points

Jul 16, 2021 1:11 AM in response to léonie

Hi Léonie and thanks for you answer.

I checked again the option is well set to "Keep Originals" no change occurred after system upgrade
I don't use iCloud Photos except for Shared Albums. The pictures that Photos wants to reimport are not part of any shared album

Anyone can explain how Photos for Mac does the comparison to select which pictures needs to be imported ? Is it based on the name ? Is it based on a global hash generated from all metadata of the photo ?

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Answer 4

neirdaa Author

Level 1

11 points

Jul 15, 2021 9:24 AM in response to SnickZ.

Hi thanks for your reply.

I thought it was clear : I import all my photos with photo app directly. I do not import manually or use any third party app.

The photos taken from messages are automatically saved to camera roll. That’s the photo I’m referring here.

However I don’t see how going to safe mode / another user could help. Can you point the folders used by photo app, user specific that are used ? I can try to move them and see how photos react to that. I guess it should be somewhere in ~/Library/*

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Photo reimport already imported photos

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