Photos app (mac, OS X) not importing photos from iPhone

Similar thing happening to me.

iPhone SE running iOS 9

MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) running Yosemite OSX 10.10

The app opens, and I can see new photos not previously imported (over 3000), although it loads extremely slowly.

When I click import, I get taken to the Import screen, but even after waiting overnight, the progress bar never moved and it was stuck on the same number (importing 3100 photos, example.)

After doing some research, I frustratedly decided it was time to upgrade, and I upgraded to Sierra.

Tried again, and everything worked. Not only that, but the not-yet-imported photos all loaded really quickly when I connected my phone and the import itself took about an hour. It surprised me how fast it was actually.

All in all, I'm glad I upgraded just bc the headache disappeared relatively 'instantly.'

Yes yes, I have the exact same problem!

Photos App shows:

Already Imported (11,000 items)

New Items (3315 items)

Number keeps increasing until the whole app hangs.

If I'm lucky enough, the loading process completes and I'm able to start importing. Unfortunately, the app hangs after around 100 items get imported.

I never encountered this problem before. At first I suspected that my Mac Mini is too slow to cope with the process, until I came across your post.

I have around 50,000 photos in the library.

iCloud Storage Subscription: 500Gb (296Gb unused)

Phone: iPhone 6 and 6+, 128 Gb

iOS: 8.3

Mac Mini 1.4Ghz (Late 2014)

Mac OS: 10.10.3

I have the same issue. I find it's the 'delete after importing' selection that causes it to fail. If I don't select that they import fine. Then I have to manually clear my iPhone.

I don't get to select this option. I think my Photos App hangs before reaching there.

Thanks.

Same issue importing Photos from iPhone 4s or 5s into late-2012 MBP. Progress bar just sits. Have to force quit to get out. Apple please solve this bug. I really miss event tiles on iPhoto that you could scroll over to see contents....

I have this issue too. Does anyone from Apple monitor these?

Trying to deal with a lot of photos, and archive them, then upgrade my phone (a critical path item for something need to do with the phone). I opened several cases with Apple Support, which was worthless (even had one Apple support person advocate powering off my MacBook, with an unresponsive Photos app, until showed them how to safely kill off via back-end Terminal shell).

I was able to import all of my iPhone images via "Image Download" onto a USB device plugged into my MacBook, but the photos remained / remain on the iPhone (I guess i can manually delete them off of the phone.., reading about that today... But we need a turn-key solution as MacBook users... Trying to open iPhotos from my Apps library, it wants me to upgrade to a version of iPhoto that's newer..., but Apple has deprecated, and can't do that..., so with Yosemite, for me, no way to go back... :-( ).

My Photos downloads with / without checking "delete after done" gets through about 250 of over 3,000 images, and "hangs" (and apparently, any deleting it does, won't happen until after the import? since the photos it DID import are still on my phone).

Help! apple products not able to handle iPhone content here...

- Joe P. -- Disgruntled IT Professional who usually prefers all things Apple & *Nix

LABeachBoy wrote:

I have this issue too. Does anyone from Apple monitor these?

Generally, no; these are user-to-user forums. There are a few Apple folks who come through to keep order, and infrequently one of them will provide some canned wisdom from an existing document when a query goes completely unanswered for some days, but this one has responses and is not likely to attract one of them.

Sorry to say, I don't have a solution to your problem either. I do use Image Capture to transfer pictures from my iPhone, but not to delete them. (I'm now on iCloud Photo Library, so they stay on the phone and reduce as needed.)

Thanks, this was helpful.

I had success this morning... All of my photos were imported from the phone (iPhone 5S), and after that was completed, I opened my phone all on the phone, and essentially saw the photos disappear. So... Success!

What did I do differently?

Well there had been two failed attempts (and a few aborted), both of which imported about 250 - 300 photos, then simply quit, and the app became unresponsive, until I had to kill it from the process list (a "kill -HUP" was unsuccessful... The almighty "kill -9" on the process gave it an ugly stop..., but at least didn't effect power on my device. These commands from the "terminals" O/S shell obviously).

As others in this thread have alluded to... This issue appears to be a resource issue on the Mac (maybe even a communication thing between Mac 7 iPhone? Handling lots of images... Probably meant to do in smaller chunks). I had done a reboot before the last failed attempt, so this may not be the smoking gun..., but this time, I rebooted, and made sure everything was closed, verifying in Activity Monitor (i also closed all apps on the phone too).

I then started Photos (on MacBook), with the phone plugged in, and told the app to import all 3,000 or so photos (new only), and "delete after".

I watched Activity Monitor as it completed all of the images, and being a bit anal, I made sure my phone was responsive (although a few times got up & left, and it was locked when came back, so think non-issue...). The activity the whole time was about 50 - 80% on this one app (is probably a good idea to do single-threaded, might be this app just doesn't play well with swapping).

I did not monitor memory usage (my circa-2009 titanium MacBook has 4 GB of RAM), but probably memory-intensive too.

Am liking the fact that after importing all of the images off of my phone, I then went back into Photos on the MacBook and was able to export all of the recent photos to my Apple file-system USB drive, and added the option to create a "Moments" file-folder structure (this will make it easier in the future, should other such Apple App Changes happen for Photos, to organize / and know what images are on that drive, as well as if / when I selectively later decide to import just certain images back to the phone).

I hear the previous poster on the iCloud option. i thought about that, and if this might be an Apple ploy to get users to more use the (and pay for more storage on0 the cloud, so I stayed away from that (although to make sure I had a good backup of my phone before all of this, I did shell out to get the higher-priced option and 200 GB storage, to verify everything backed up before the iOS upgrade).

Hope this helps. This was frustrating, took up too much of resources of at-home life... :-)

I had a similar problem but slightly different, the new photos did not show up in the Photos app import window. So I had to take some new photos on the phone, and then delete them whilst the phone was plugged in. Then replug it in and the photos would show up in the import window. I have no problem once importing, however, the bar does not show any progress but a notification will appear once it is done. Usually importing 4K videos on iPhone 6s 64gb.

I had a very large movie file on my iPhone which seemed to cause problems with importing. Couldn't import with Photos, tried Image Capture which normally works for me, but it froze halfway through loading the photo images, let alone be able to import them.

Finally had success with the PhoneView app. (A 3rd party app which I originally purchased to be able to keep logged archives of Messages). It also enables access to the Camera Roll. The photos and movie all appeared in it's window, I dragged and dropped to a folder, then could import from there to Photos.

I had a similar problem but slightly different, the new photos did not show up in the Photos app import window. So I had to take some new photos on the phone, and then delete them whilst the phone was plugged in. Then replug it in and the photos would show up in the import window. I have no problem once importing, however, the bar does not show any progress but a notification will appear once it is done. Usually importing 4K videos on iPhone 6s 64gb.

Thank you so much! This solved my problem. 😎

I had the same problem while importing from my iPhone 6. The app would say: importing 1371 photos, and it would just hang on that number. No significant CPU usage visible in Activity Monitor, etc. And when i aborted the import, and tried closing the Photos app, it said: 'closing the library'. While some other threads on this forum said that i would go finish that proces after a few hours, my Mac didnt finish 'closing the library' within 8 hours. So i forced quit Photos.app. I tried the import again, but same problem..

However, i noticed that of the 1371 photos that Photos.app import windows showed, the first 6 of them didnt have a thumbnail. Probably corrupt photos.. I deselected those from importing: problem solved (use cmd+A to select all of them.. saved me from clicking 1365 photos)

I think it wasn't a coincidence that the first picture was corrupt, as the first import attempt probably imported al pictures chronologically untill it reached the first corrupted picture. If you dont have any pictures without thumbnails, you can maybe still try to deselect the first few pictures from importing, and just trial and error from there:)

I've read up on this issue in a few places and all solutions did not work for me.

Working on a mid-2009 13" Macbook Pro with 8 gigs of memory and a 250 gig solid state drive. The iPhone is a 5s. Trying to import about 1,500 pictures.

Tried repairing the library with a sudo code, tried repairing the library with command + option at application startup. Tried importing with "Delete After Import" toggled on, then off. Tried importing small batches with a little success, then but only 2-3 times before hanging again.

Nothing worked. Now I am importing the images through Image Capture and plan to move them into Photos after they are on the Macbook, rather than import at all. The app seems to be seriously broken. Will update with success or failure.

My problem is that when I import the photos from my iPhone 6 to Photos it does not delete the photos from the iPhone. After reading the above issues this is how I resolved my issue.

1. When you connect your iPhone to your Mac let Photos open but don't do anything with it.

2. In iTunes go ahead and do a sync and a back up. Keep in mind because of the new Photos app iTunes only puts photos onto your iPhone it does not copy them from your iPhone like it used too.

3. When done with your sync and backup close iTunes. Do not unplug your iPhone!

4. Go back to Photos app and import 1 photo. After that close the Photos app. Do not unplug your iPhone!

5. Open the Photos app, and now import all new photos. I also checked delete after import.

Doing the import in this order corrected my problem of the photos not being deleted from my iPhone. This worked for me I hope it helps you too.

Mark