Import from iPhone to Photos.app stalls and cannot be stopped

1. Quit out of Photos app if you have it open on the Mac
2. Re-launch Photos app and immediately hold down Command+Option keys
3. When the Repair Library message appears in the app “You are about to repair the library “Library Name” – choose “Repair” to start the library repair process

It's been 2 years now. The bug still there. And I finally manage to import all Live Photos without stall. I don't know which part is critical, but what I did is.

1) Restart both iPhone and Mac

2) Open Photos on Mac, select the iPhone under "import" (Do NOT touch / open Photos on iPhone)

3) unlock iphone, disable auto lock (keep screen on, I just set the screen to full dim)

4) open image capture, select the iPhone on the left side then leave it open

5) Go back to Photos, now click "import all"

With the above procedure, I can import >10000 Live photos at once without stall.

I personally suspect the key point is keep image capture open and make sure it access the iPhone, but I didn't test the theory. I don't want to mess up my import. So I just write down what I did exactly.

I'm having precisely the same issues.

Me too... Can't import any photos from my iPhone to my Macbook now. The photos app says "Importing 413 items" and just hangs. It looks like it's trying to generate thumbnails, but the grey placeholder images just stay there.

I've been having a similar issue but for me I have tried several things:

1. Import directly from Iphone 6. - Left it over night and it imports some but not all

2. Import from usb drive - I copied the photos off my phone to a usb drive. This imported into Photos and I was left with approx 12 that had the incorrect date. They said data taken was the date of import. I can lvie with this.

3. After no.2 worked I then connected my Iphone to import any new pics and it said that I had approx 11,000 photos to import....these are the same photos that had already been imported!!!

Can I reinstall Iphoto on my Macbook Pro (Early 2011)....??? Please?

I've experienced the exact same behaviour, except that whilst I used the work-around you describe to import the majority of 10k photos into photos.app, I now can't even import the additional images I'm shooting with my lovely iPhone 6PLUS that I bought for...well, photoshooting. Apple: pls sort this out!

Just an update... I tried again a few days later and it worked. I have no idea what I did in the meantime - maybe my phone and/or Macbook needed to be completely shut down and restarted? I usually put them in sleep mode or whatever, but sometimes a complete shutdown will fix strange issues (at least that was often the case in Windows - fortunately I've very few issues since switching to OS X 🙂 )

I found a work around that works for me..

1. I opened Image capture. Select the Iphone and then at the bottom click the little up arrow. Select the option to always open Image Capture when Iphone is connected.

2. I import all photos into a folder ~/Pictures/iPhone Incoming

3. Once imported, I run a script found here:

https://gist.github.com/fcrespo82/8429020

4. This will scan all the photos in the iPhone Incoming folder and then copy them into a new folder called ~/Pictures/Iphone. It will sort them into year and then month.

5. I open Photos and click File --> Import and I then select the Iphone folder with the sorted folders.

6. Once Photos has them, I select to import all new items.

Done...

Sounds like alot but it's not that much....I do want to try to automate it. I have setup My Photo Stream so that any photos taken on my iphone are automatically improted into my Photos app but I have alot of older photos in other folders that I want to bring in as well.

Hi,

I've been painfully experiencing this is issue for at least 2 years; first, with iPhoto, now with Photos.

It seems that the stalling is more likely to happen with videos.

That's with a 2008, 24" iMac (importing from iPhone 5S).

It's an older machine, so I can't complain as much as you guys...

Of note, occasional imports with my 2014 MBP are all OK.

I had tried the workarounds mentioned here in the past, for example using Photostream, or Image capture, but:

- Unless I'm not up to date, Photostream doesn't do videos.

- At the time I tried Image capture imports (sorry for the distant memories), I had problems with meta data... not all of it being imported (geolocalization if I remember correctly, maybe also exposure and other information). Also, possibly creation date bugs, if I remember correctly...

Now I do Photos imports in small batches, let's say 50 at a time. 25% of the time, it stalls, and I have to force quit and redo a small batch.

The larger the batch, the more chances of stalling. Needless to say, "import all" on 5000 items always fails quickly...

Did anyone (still under warranty) got any official response from Apple ?

I will follow this thread carefully, hoping for a definitive solution!

Same exact problem. Haven't been able to import from my iPhone6 to my Mac for weeks. Says it's importing but it just hangs. Try to stop import nothing happens. Try to quit Photos and it just says it's "closing library" but never quits. I have to force quit every time. I agree it's videos that seems to cause the problem. Same thing used to happen in iPhotos. This app is a POS

I'm not under warranty anymore. Anyone tried calling AppleCare with this?

Same problem here ... Trying to import into Photos app (Mac Yosemite) from iPhone 5S. Stuck about 10% through on "Importing 120 items".

Just an update to my previous post....

After trying to shut down photos, I ended up having to do a force quit.

Then I did a full restart on the Mac.

After it came back up, I was successfully able to complete the import from the iPhone 5S.

same problem here.. force quit, restart, etc etc, problem remains.. trying to import 802 items. @Apple - Simple fix available?