Photos app doesn't recognize my iphone when plugged in. how can i fix this problem?

i had the same problem but i finally found a solution that worked!!! on your iphone, go to settings > general > reset > then click reset location and privacy settings. this will reset all connectiions your phone had with your computer and will re connect! hope this helps other people

I had the same problem. iTunes sees my iPhone but Photos does not (neither does Finder in the "Devices" section). After some trial and error I selected View in the menu in Photos, then choose Devices. I found my iPhone there and when I selected it everything worked as expected.

Yes!

I started Photos. Doesn't start automatically but who cares.

"I selected View in the menu in Photos, then choose Devices. I found my iPhone there and when I selected it everything worked as expected"

Thank you, this did it for me too.

By the way IPhoto saw my IPhone and I was about to go back to it. This really shouldn't be an issue.

Do you have another application that accesses your iPhone from your computer such as DropBox? That's what was causing my issue. Once I disabled DropBox from syncing photos on my iPhone I was able to see my phone in the photos app. Hope this helps!

Thanks so much. Your suggestion really helped. Once I quite Itunes Photos app showed Devices, but hidden.

I then clicked hidden to "show" the device and then top left corner ticked the box to "show photos on phone", then the import button became available.

Photos were then imported. Seems like there's an inbuilt system to make you use icloud.

Apple updates and changes their security settings from time to time, for connecting your devices to your laptop/PC or Mac via iTunes. Sometimes, there may be a pop-up on your device to "trust computer" and you have to select "Yes" in order for your device to be properly connected via the Lightning connector cable to your computer.

Elsewhere, someone suggested "re-setting" the phone and this allows iTunes on your computer to treat it as a new device. You have to remember to click "yes" to the "trust this computer" prompt.

Another method, depending on the iOS version you run on your device, is that I had to remember to pull down the menu on Photos to "import" and then unlock the iPhone, and it worked; this may be a different problem than what you posted of course.

This is what worked for me... soft restarts, restarts of phone, reseting privacy on phone--> none of that worked. Logged out of the other open act on the mac and bingo iPhone is recognized.

Just wanted to further clarify... On Import options I unchecked "Enable camera uploads for:" and under the selective Sync options I unchecked "Photos from iPhoto". Then it worked!

I updated the mac (update all) with the iphone plugged in the computer at the same time. That seemed to do the trick for me.

Gail from maine obviously didn't actually read the original post. The OP had already tried her suggestion. The problem is that YOU CAN'T SELECT "IMPORT" WHEN YOU CONNECT YOUR DEVICE BECAUSE PHOTOS DOESN'T RECOGNIZE THAT THERE ARE ANY PICTURES TO IMPORT!

This is my experience with Photos, iPhoto, & Image Capture.

Thanks for playing though!

What finally worked for me is stupidly simple: I turned the lightning plug around 180˚. Just try flipping around the plug that enters the iPhone. Suddenly—go figure—all my pix appeared in the app on my laptop!

YMMV.

Thank you, this solved it for me (after days of trying other things)! I had a usb extension cable connected and that works for my iPhone, but Photos wouldn't recognize my wife's iPhone. Plugged directly into the mac and it worked fine. Strangely iTunes was fine with the extension cable on both of our phones.

Initially I could import pictures from my iPhone using the "Photos" app. It suddenly stopped working, probably after some OS upgrade, but I don't remember which one.

I tried all suggestions in this thread like "soft reset", looking for the device in View, etc. In my case nothing worked.

However I do have a workaround. For me "Phones" doesn't work but "Image Capture" does see my iPhone device and allows me to copy all photos to my MacBook.

After that you could open "Phones: and import the pictures from the harddrive on your Mac into albums.

Willem

I had this problem for months. I tried a lot of things in this thread. What finally worked was plugging into a different USB drive.

Based on a recommendation in another post, I deleted some screenshots off of my phone. That seemed to work.

I get the message "This Mac has not yet been granted access to media on “____’s iPhone”. In order to import media to this Mac, tap “Trust” on “____’s iPhone”. You may need to unlock the device first"

Since my iPhone does not display a "trust" prompt (it works great with iTunes) the handy dandy prompt from Photos is totally useless.

Ever since OS X arrived every upgrade has trashed something. I really hate these guys.