Photos import got stuck

I don't have a perfect solution, but the issue seems to be importing annotated photos, ie. pictures where on the iphone you click edit, hit the marker and scribble something. For whatever reason, the Mac Photos app hangs trying to import these, loses the list of ready imports, and you must disconnect and start over again. I see this today with iphone 15 pro 17.5.1 and Sonoma 14.2.1, but have been troubleshooting the issue for 2 years with various software and finally made the connection today.

As a workaround I un-select the annotated photos and import the rest. And I see them in the set of ready imports every time I connect the phone.

Are you able to download photos with Image Capture to a folder on the drive?

If you can can you import them from the folder into your library?

If importing from the folder doesn't work try opening one with Preview. If it opens OK try importing again to the library. If that fails try exporting from Preview as a new jpeg with a new name and try importing it.

Where is your library located - in the Picture folder?

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

Hi RRws9,

As another option, try using Image Capture to see what happens when you try importing the photos there. Here's how to Transfer images in Image Capture on Mac.

Let us know if that works, or if you get the same result.

Take care.

I just solved this. I was just having this exact issue, downloading photos from an iPhone XS onto my MacBook Pro 2021. I came here looking for a solution, tried some of the above suggestions, nothing.

So I looked at those photos on my MacBook that had downloaded successfully from my phone, and found the last one that downloaded. Then I went back to my iPhone, and found that photo. Then, I assumed that the problem was the NEXT photo, the photo that would have followed the last downloaded photo. I didn't want to lose that photo, so I duplicated the photo, made a small edit to it, then deleted the original. BINGO.

As soon as I did that, the photos started downloading again. The photo I deleted must have been corrupted and had stopped the whole downloading process. Deleting that photo got everything flowing again. Ah, relief.

Hope that helps someone. Cheers!

Hi RRws9,

We'll be happy to see how we can help.

You have tried some good steps and thank you for sharing those. Have you tried shutting down and restarting both the iPhone and the Mac? If not, we recommend giving that a try. A simple step we know, but it does fix a lot of unusual issues that pop up.

You didn't mention how you were downloading the photos, but if you are using a cable connected to your Mac, have you tried a different port? A different cable?

If you are still unable to get the photos downloaded, let us know what happens when you try. Do you see an error message? If so what does it say?

Transfer photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac or PC - Apple Support

Good luck!

Hello RRws9,

If you reviewed all of the previous articles and the issue persists, it may be best to reach out to Apple Directly.

You can do so by going to Get Support

They will take a closer look and check on available options.

Cheers!

Thank you, I spent ages banging my head with over 8000 photos and 1000 videos. Turns out one particular video "couldn't download a higher quality version", likely because I went to my Mac and iPhone and killed the awful iCloud stuff. It is so **** insistent even though I turned it off when I set up both devices.

Regardless thanks, normally nothing useful comes from the Apple Community forums because Apple design their apps with almost zero helpful error messages (or none at all in this case)

I've been trying to do the same for hours now and no progress. I dont know why it is so difficult, i mean the mac and iphone are trusted and it seems they don't know each other. I've tried restarting both and no luck. So frustrated that it makes me want to switch to PC and Android just to avoid this b.s. I get it, ya'll want the cloud, by the space. No, i want to use my own local space. unbelievable

Same problem here.

MacOs Sonoma 14.4.1.

The import process gets stuck on random images. I have 50k images to transfer, but it's impossible to even get to 10 thousand.

Using Image Capture is not an option as it loses every edit done on iPhone.

It's unbelievable that such a simple task can become such a nightmare.

The Photos app is just unusable right now.

.. What have you done to it? It used to work like a charm.

Please address this.

“Hi Old Toad,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I tried importing with Image Capture, but it won’t import any edits done on iPhone. It just imports the clean image, without any crop or color correction, which I would like to keep.

The Preview workaround wouldn’t work for me, as I am doing this whole import upon suggestion of Apple Support: my initial problem was that Photos doesn’t recognize a bunch of images that are on my phone and also aleeady imported into my photo library. Therefore, it creates a huge amount of duplicates (around 15k, which is quite unmanageable).

Changing the images’ names is not an option for me, as it would mess up the detection of duplicates.

No, I am not running any “cleaning,” “speeding up,” or VPN software. Actually, it’s a brand new MacBook Pro with almost nothing installed yet.

I really don’t know what to do. I was thinking of using third-party software such as Power Photo, but apparently, it can only help once the photos are imported. It seems that my only option is to import with the Photos app, unfortunately.

Do you have any other ideas?

I managed to solve it in the same manner but lost too much time and was so frustrated. I consider this a simple file transfer. On a high-end devices we pay above average this is not acceptable. Latest iOS update (17.5.1) states:

“This update provides important bug fixes and addresses a rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted”

Maybe it’s connected somehow.

Yes! Thanks for your reply. Your answer seems to be correct: there are some pictures that Photos doesn’t like, including those noted on the iPhone.

In my case, knowing this didn’t help much. When you want to import several thousand pictures, doing it a thousand or so at a time is a long and somewhat meditative process that I wish I hadn’t had to go through. For me, it took around four hours.

The import process should skip the pictures it doesn’t like and continue importing the rest. It could then give me a list of the problematic images at the end. Or even without a report, just keep going.

This worked for me!! amen