Trouble transferring photos from iPhone13 pro to iPhotos on a MacBook pro

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Level 1

8 points

Trouble transferring photos from iPhone13 pro to iPhotos on a MacBook pro

I am using a late 2016 MacBook pro running Mohave 10.14.6 and an iPhone 13 pro max with iOS 15.2

When I take photos only a few of what are visible on my new phone will display in iPhotos on my computer. When I transfer them they are removed from my phone (with that option selected). iPhotos then shows my phone to have no photos despite my phone showing more exist.

If I unplug the phone from the computer and plug it in again more photos will show up and I can download them to the computer. But still not all of them.

Today it took repeating this six times to get the newest batch of photos from my phone into iPhotos. This occurred in increments displaying on the computer and with corresponding transfers containing 6, 10, 8, 17, 31, and 9 photos each. (All were taken immediately before transferring to my computer)

iPhotos has also shuffled them wildly and does not display or download them in the order they were taken.

Any idea what is going on or how to fix this. I can certainly work around all of that but it would be nicer if it worked right. My iPhone 7 does not have this problem.

iPhone 13 Pro

Posted on Jan 27, 2022 10:23 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

karina184

Community Specialist

Jan 28, 2022 12:05 PM in response to keepertrout

Hi keepertrout,

Thank you for participating in the Apple Support Communities. We understand you're having trouble transferring photos between devices, and we'd like to assist. You may consider using iCloud Photos on all your devices. This will keep your photo library in sync on all of your devices. This article explains more about this:

Set up and use iCloud Photos

Just to confirm, are these the steps you're following to transfer photos to your Mac?

Transfer photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac or PC

Take care.

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Answer 2

keepertrout Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 28, 2022 1:12 PM in response to karina184

I could in theory use iCloud but I take so many photos that storage would get very expensive. Instead I use a pair of Thunderbolt enclosures with multiple hard drives for storage and every couple of years remove any photos older than a few months out iPhotos to keep as much free space available on my computer as possible.

Same with my iPhone; I keep very few photos in it and move them to my computer frequently.

Yes, what you described is how I transfer photos.

This problem is of recent origin and followed my acquiring an iPhone 13 pro.

I was just about to return and update this post as I encountered a suggestion to try repairing my photo index in iPhoto. It took a while but it appears to have put the photos back into the right order and reunited the divided photo sessions. I have not yet had a chance to shoot more images and see if that fixed the upload glitch but I am suspecting I will find that it has.

Thanks for your input and help suggestions.

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Answer 3

keepertrout Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 28, 2022 2:02 PM in response to keepertrout

I was in error on my assumption. I took more images to test this yet when transferring them from iPhone13 pro, iPhotos did not recognize and left behind 53 photographs in spite of transferring 62 photos. It does not even recognize them as being in the phone despite the fact I can view them in the phone so my thought fixing the photo index solved my trouble was incorrect. My iPhone 7 continues to take and transfer images just fine.

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