Photos keep seeing old pics as new, importing ad nauseum.

I have been having this problem for the past year or so. I am not sure if you have resolved it or not but since I just figured out how I thought I would share with you just in case.

Today I tried importing those pictures that kept saying they were new (38 of them) one by one but selecting each one and importing them individually - this did not take more than a few minutes at the most. This seemed to have solved the problem. I disconnected my iPhone and reconnected it after doing this and the problem was no longer there! I had no new photos to import!!! I was so excited.

Hopefully this helps if you haven't already found an way of resolving this problem!

Stefanie

My 'workaround' has been to delete the photos after importing. I know. It's lame! 🙂

if you are able, update your Mac to Sierra and your phone to iOS 10.

I have an early 2011 MacBook pro and I'm still having this issue. Every time I plug my iPhone in it tries to import the same old photos. I have sierra and iOS 10. iCloud photo is turned on. I had to download an app called duplicate photo fixer pro because I had let the problem get out of control. I had around 30,000 photos, a little more than half were duplicates. I have since moved more than half out of the photos app and into the finder. I kept a little over 3,000 in photos app. Even still photos would like to import old photos. It does however give the files new names and marks the date as December 31, 1969. I don't know what to do.

Why exactly are you plugging your phone into your Mac if you are using iCloud Photo Library 9there is no service named iCloud photos so I'm guessing that ICPL is what you mean) -- generally if you use ICPL you do not plug your phone into the Mac and you certainly would not ever import photos from the Phone since they already have been synced by ICPL

LN

If you're using iCloud Photo Library, the simplest fix to try is to create a new library.

Hold down the option key and open the Photos app (either by double clicking Photos in the Finder or single clicking Photos in the dock). A dialogue box will open and give you the option of creating a new library. The welcome screen gives you the option to "Turn on iCloud Photo Library in Preferences". Do this.

Photos will then download all your photos from iCloud. So it should end up being the same as your old library.

You can keep your old library and open it any time by holding down the option key when starting up Photos.

I plug it in because I have around 80 gb of music and I rather back my phone up to my computer than to iCloud. Its faster. But that shouldn't matter, the photos shouldn't be trying to import if there are already there. I forgot to add that my wife has the same issue and she never plugs her phone into her computer.

Also all the photos at this point are all coming from my computer. I've wiped my phone and iCloud at least twice now. Then I turn iCloud back on let the photos upload then start my iPhone fresh and sync all the photos to it. And still when I plug in the iPhone it tries to sync photos to my mac. None of the numbers match. The iphone and my mac have a ten photo count difference all the time. But my mac and and iCloud show the same numbers. When i plug my iPhone in it doesn't just try to import 10 photos, its hundreds.

I am still having the same problem even with macosSierra and IOS10 on a 6S. I am using a workaround that I found on a previous post. I am using Image Capture to bring the latest images into a folder. Then I am importing from it to Photos. It may not be as elegant as just importing from the iPhone but it beats bringing in all of those duplicate images.

This is the third time I've posted this fix for the duplicate photo import problem.

If you use ICPL (iCloud Photo Library) the simplest and easiest fix is to create a new library, then re-import all your photos from ICPL.

- Hold down the option key when launching Photos

- Select new library, then follow the prompts to download your photos from iCloud.

In my case, the duplicated import problem stopped, my library was recreated (except for Faces) and is the same as my old library (which I backed up).

The best part is you don't even need to back up your old library. Your new library can exist on your computer side by side with your old library, and you can back up or delete it once you confirm that your new library is good.

Added to that, is that if you are going to rely on your iCloud Photo Librar, you can stop physically importing your photos completely from your iPhone.

Yes right.

And for the times when you plug in your phone to your computer, you can stop the import notification from Photos by deselecting "Open Photos for this device"

Had the same issue.

Here is how I fixed it

Send the photos/videos to my mac via Airdrop, iMessage, etc.

Permanently delete them from my iPhone and the photos app.

Send them back and save the photos/videos and them reimport all new photos/videos.

The photos/videos will import for the last time. As they are reimported they will no longer be seen as new. Also the photos/videos are time stamped in the moments tab they will be sorted to its original place. But not in the camera roll, something I am not using.

What this is doing is giving them a new identity on the iPhone and the photos/videos is new for my iPhone, giving it another attempt to import properly.

Ugh! I have this problem too, only it happens with my Sony nex camera. For me, it is not just a few pictures, but several pics and videos as well. This causes a MAJOR issue because with the multiple duplicates of long videos, I end up running out of startup disk space. So, every time I try to download pics, I have to weed through old videos to make sure I'm only deleting the copies. It is a HUGE pain. I've uploaded the photos duplicates app to help, but it doesn't recognize any as duplicates.

Additionally, I just noticed that ones I recently downloaded were marked with a date of November of last year (11 months ago), so that is a horrible glitch as well, since it will mess with my ability to search photos.

Macbook Pro (15" mid 2015)

Yosemite 10.10.5

Photos Version 1.0.1 (215.65.0)

I'm rather late to this thread. However, I thought I'd share my experience with already imported photos that were not deleted from my iPhone 5C showing up as new photos next session of importing photos. This issue has been persistent since my old iPhone 4/10.6.8/iPhoto setup.

As I travel often and split my time between Asia and the US, I noticed that the already imported photos would start showing up after I changed time zones from the original photo timezone. By manually setting both the iPhone and MBPro times zones to the original timezone, then restarting each and connecting to iPhoto/Photos, the formerly imported photos no longer show in the import dialogue. However, any previously imported photos taken outside this timezone still show. It appears to me that Apple has failed to adequately ground all photos and database import data to a fixed GMT zone.

Perhaps my experience and observation is inconsistent with the issue as experienced by other users,. However, I suspect Apple has failed to arrive at a system for IDing files beyond some time stamps. Oddly, created and modified time stamps are inconstant between what's shown in Finder and what is shown in iPhoto/Photos photo info.