How to transfer photos from iPhone without iPhotos or Image Capture

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Level 1

4 points

How to transfer photos from iPhone without iPhotos or Image Capture

I have a rather large iPhoto library (145,000 photos) and have used it for years. Recently, everytime I try to transfer photos from my iPhone to the iPhoto library the status bar doesn't move and iPhoto just sits or freezes. I am talking about batches of 15 photos or less. I tried to use Image Capture and it freezes after trying to download even one photo.

Due to this ongoing problem, I am not backed up by 13,000 photos on my phone. I dont know why this is happening and need my photos backed up. Here are some other details to help with the answer.

Mac Mini, 3.2 GHz, 6-Core Intel Core i7, 32GB RAM. Hard drive is 819.13 GB of 2 TB left. External hard drive (where photos are stored) has 4.54 TB out of 5 TB remaining.
iPhone 14 Pro Max
Running Sequoia 15.5

I dont want to use icloud because I dont have enough storage space (2TB only) and I also dont want to synch 200,000+ photos on my phone.

Mac mini, macOS 15.5

Posted on Jun 17, 2025 9:34 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 18, 2025 7:33 AM in response to DC_Yinzer

DC_Yinzer wrote: …everytime I try to transfer photos from my iPhone to the iPhoto library the status bar doesn't move and iPhoto just sits or freezes. I am talking about batches of 15 photos or less. I tried to use Image Capture and it freezes after trying to download even one photo.

Since even Image Capture doesn't work, the first thing I think about is hardware-- the cable or a port on the Mac or iPhone. I'd try a new cable. You can also try a Finder transfer over wifi and see if that works any better.

You could add storage to iCloud for a month, clear out your phone, and then go back. I use two Photos Libraries on my Mac: a large Archive Library and a smaller Favorites Library. Only the Favorites Library gets shared, so my iCloud needs remain smaller. I've not had trouble synchronizing Libraries with iCloud at all. Using cable transfer is like using a dial phone in a touch-tone world-- it works, but why?

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

216,770 points

Jun 18, 2025 9:59 AM in response to DC_Yinzer

Where is your Photos library located? If on an external drive how is the drive formatted and connected to your Mini?

In trying to use Image Capture are you trying to import into the Photos library or to a folder on the Mini's drive?

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

How much free space do you have on the destination drive?

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How to transfer photos from iPhone without iPhotos or Image Capture

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