Photos will not transfer from IPhone to Mac Mini

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Level 1

4 points

Photos will not transfer from IPhone to Mac Mini

I bought a Mac Mini recently looking to not have to deal with these sorts of obnoxious issues. Unfortunately, it has been just as much of a hassle as trying to integrate my iPhone with my old windows pc.

All I want to do is transfer my photos from my IPhone 12 to my Mac Mini so they are saved somewhere. When I click “Import photos” it will not import a single photo, and the progress bar says “Importing 0 of 3,047 items”. I have tried a different cable and a different port on the Mac. Both devices are fully up to date with their software. There are no issues when backing anything else up, only the photos. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this is incredibly frustrating.

Mac mini (M2, 2023)

Posted on Jul 21, 2024 2:45 PM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

217,880 points

Jul 22, 2024 1:38 PM in response to Dreizehn77

Have you tried using Image Capture while the iPhone is connected to the Mac with its USB cable. It can select and download either to a folder on the Desktop or elsewhere on the drive or into the Photos library.

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Answer 2

Jul 22, 2024 8:08 AM in response to Dreizehn77

It would help to know what steps you have gone through to "transfer my Photos," since there are multiple ways to do that. You are using a cable, apparently-- have you tried using the app Image Capture from the Applications folder? This sometimes gets less confused by abnormal stuff. You are right to be suspicious of the cable-- good to try an alternate one. Also, "fully up to date" carries little information-- you should tell us the macOS and the iOS.

Is your Mac's Photos library in the Pictures Folder?

Honestly, the best way to transfer pictures from iPhone to Mac is to use iCloud. 3000 pictures is probably too many for the 5 GB that Apple gives you for free, but for $3 you can get 200 GB for a month and then cancel. And, really, iCloud makes the device integration that you seek really sweet.

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Answer 3

AlWeir

Level 5

5,543 points

Jul 22, 2024 12:54 PM in response to Dreizehn77

Use Airdrop between the two devices if possible, if not move them to iCloud since icloud is a is a synchronization service.

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Answer 4

Dreizehn77 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 22, 2024 12:50 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

iphone is iOS 17.5.1, the Mac is Sonoma 14.5

By “transferring photos” I mean plugging my phone in, opening the photos application on my Mac, and clicking the import all button to transfer all of my new photos from my phone to my Mac which, in this case, is all of them since I haven’t done it before. It begins the process and initiates it, but just won’t seem to actually import anything.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how to tell if my photos library is in the pictures folder. I’m still learning how to navigate file directories on something that isn’t windows.

I have not tried image capture since I didn’t know that was an option, but I’ll look into it. I know ICloud is an option, but I’d really like to be able to do it through a cable since that’s a feature that should work.

Thanks!

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Photos will not transfer from IPhone to Mac Mini

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