iPhone disconnects when importing to Photos.app on non-iCloud non-synced Library file on external drive

Hi There, Well, this is happening to me too! I have the latest OS, Sonoma 14.3.1, on my Air and IOS 17.13.1 on my iPhone 13 Max, and every time I try to import more than 1 photo, the iPhone disconnects completely. I am connecting via cable. This is driving me crazy! This should not be happening to something so common as importing photos.

Any help would be highly appreciated. I need to clear all my photos from my iPhone as i am going to the Camino in May.

PS. I am not using any external drives.

I called support and they had me start in Safe Mode and then went ahead with importing from an iPhone 13 pro and iPhone 14 pro to an external drive with my Photos library. That seemed to do the trick as I uploaded everything from the 13 pro in safe mode restarted and then uploaded from the 14 pro, not in safe mode. I hope this helps!

I do not use iCloud to sync my photos either. I have an iPhone 14 Pro and an M2 2022 MacBook Air. After installing Sonoma 14.03 and iOS 17, I was not able to sync photos at all via the cable. My symptoms are the same as yours that the phone syncs and backs up in Finder, but if I launch Photos the iPhone disconnects abruptly as soon as I "trust this computer" and the photos attempt to show up in the import pane.

I was on the phone with Tech Support, initially we thought it might be a port issue. Plus, had two appointments at the Apple Genius Bar. After talking, syncing, searching settings and knowledge bases, we all kind of came to the conclusion there is some sort of bug that Apple has to address in an update. We could try to wipe the devises and restore from backups, but it seemed an extreme action without confidence of results. The Geniuses advised that the iPhone backups do contain all the pictures on the phone (not that it helps any).

Yesterday, I installed Sonoma 14.1 and iPS 17.1 and was able to sync the photos from my iPhone to Photos. I thought the problem was solved.

Tonight, however, I am having the same issue of the iPhone disconnecting when I try to import photos in Photos. My guess is that we both have to sit tight until a Sonoma update fixes the bug.

The problem is the software, not you or your setup.

Good luck!

What format is the external drive? It needs to be formatted Mac OS X Extended, Journaled or apfs and directly linked to the Mac, not on a network share.