Ever since the lateste OS upgrade, Photos will not import images from the memory card. They show up on the screen. The blue button says "Import all New Photos." I click the button and the screen switches to another screen, the "Imports" screen. Nothing happens. The images never show up.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.4
Here are some things to try if you haven't already:
Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support
The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.
Let us know what happens...
Here are some things to try if you haven't already:
Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support
The idea is to find out if the problem is with the Library, with your account, or with caches and login items, and stuff like that. One of these steps may fix the problem, but their failure to work also helps figure out what's happening.
Let us know what happens...
Try the following;
1 - launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library.
2 - try to import some of the same files into that library. Was it successful?
3 - close the test library and try again with your current library. Any change?
To format does the camera format its memory card? I guess FAT or exFAT? Sonoma changed the way it handles exFAT or msdos file systems and it might have teething issues with that.
macOS Sonoma 14 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation
Does /Applications/Image Capture work? Can you put the memory card to a card reader, mount it and copy files via the Finder? I'd recommend re-formatting the card in the camera when you are done importing all its contents.
Yes. Image Capture lets me grab the images. I can copy the files by opening the memory card.
i usually reformat th cards when I put them back in the cameras.
Thank you.
And how ist the external disk connected to your Mac? And the file system format of the external disk?
The external disk should have a wired connection, the fiel system format should be MacOS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, and the external disk should not have be en used for Time Machine backups.
As a test: Try to set the "Ignore Ownership on this volume" flag on your external disk. If it is not possible, there is something wrong.
Has your external drive been prepared exactly as described here: Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support ?
I hope it works as expected from now on. And the external drive was formatted as APFS as it should, right?
And avoid all 3rd party virus apps (Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, Intego, MacAfee, Norton, ESET NOD32, Trusteer etc) and 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up" apps (CleanMyMac, MacKeeper etc). They produce only obscure errors and money loss.
The first question in questions like these: Where is the Photos library stored? On an external disk?
njde wrote:
An error occurred while trying to allocate space for the import..."
How much free space do you have on your boot drive?
I have the same issue. My SD card worked well before the last update. I have an SD card which was formatted by the Nikon Camera "MS-DOS-Dateisystem (FAT32)" ...
I can see the SD card and the images as small icon but I can't import them.
The marking of the images and the initiation button for import can be pressed but nothing happens. I transferred the data on the Mac and tried to import or drag and drop... and it doesn't work. After drag and drop it says: "Cannot import item
This item cannot be added to your photo library because it uses an unrecognized file format or because the file does not contain valid data.
File name
Reason
An error occurred while trying to allocate space for the import..." (translated from German).... Please help with a new update... It´s a malfunction on the foto program...
Thanks. But before I do what you suggested, I should say that prior to the updates, the Photos app. Worked fine. Since then, it takes a long time to read and display the images from the memory card and then when it does, it takes a real long time to import them.
The incident I wrote in about is the latest in the mishaps with the Photos, for after a long time to display the images it simply clicks to the import page and nothing happens. No photos imported.
External drive was already set to the parameters you mentioned.
Thank you.
It’s formatted MOS Extended (Journaled) like leonie said it should be. I don’t have any of that 3rd party stuff. And once again, even if I had, the problems only started with the Photos update and not earlier when those other programs would have been running.
I’m still looking for answers as to why this is happening. Every suggestion I’ve been given was for settings or connections I was already using or to not use things I haven’t been using. 🤔
the search continues …
Is the memory card from your camera? What is the camera model and the format of the images on it?
I hope Matti has more ideas.
Two different cameras. Sony and Olympus. JPEG. I don’t think that’s the source of the problem, though because as I said, the program worked fine before the update.
Photos won't import images
