iPhone pictures not showing up in Photos

A backup is only usable for doing a full restore to the phone. It doesn't result in viewable photos on the computer.

You can transfer photos to a computer in a number of ways:

via USB cable: Import photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac or Windows PC - Apple Support

via 3rd party apps such as: http://www.photosync-app.com

via Photo Stream: My Photo Stream FAQ - Apple Support

via iCloud Photo Library which will result in a copy of all photos being on iCloud, on your Mac in the Photos app if you turn it on, and on your phone. You can turn on Optimize Storage to reduce the storage space required on the phone: iCloud Photo Library FAQ - Apple Support

Some of the pictures in my wife's iPhone would not show up in Photos on the iMac. Here is what I did.

Select the pictures on the iPhone that are not showing up in Photos.

Tap the share button

Turn on my iPhone

Select airdrop

As airdrop prepared the photos, they also showed up in Photos.

Import the new pictures in Photos.

Hope this helps

Thank you for this tip. We have an Iphone 7+ and I started looking at posts because we gave up on APerture for our photos and decided that we needed to move over to Photos. The same thing happened with Photos, the photos app could not see the photos on the iphone. After trying your trick, the photos showed up in Photos AND they also showed up in Aperture. Thank you for the tip. I will continue to see if dropbox is also a variable in this equation. just wanted to thank you for taking the time to post this.

I have the same problem. I don't know why some of the photos I took with iPhone don't show on iMac when I plug the iPhone to the iMac.

My solution: on my iPhone, select the photos, select iCloud Photo Sharing, then post them to a shared album. On iMac, add the photos from the shared album to Photos.

My solution: on my iPhone, select the photos, select iCloud Photo Sharing, then post them to a shared album. On iMac, add the photos from the shared album to Photos.

But you are aware, that the photos will be transferred at a lower pixel size, when you transfer them using a shared album, Bess? You will lose quality this way.

Thanks for letting me know. With my pretty bad naked eyes, I cannot tell the difference. However, it's good to know.

I think Apple should fix the problem - photos taken on iPhone not showing when plugged to iMac, instead of making us users trying get arounds.

tl;dr

I had this same issue today 08/01/2017 10:00PM on my iPhone 6s Plus

I plugged my phone into my iMac with a third-party cable.

My Mac prompted me that this computer needed to be Authorized for the 5 new apps that were installed recently

So I clicked Authorize

5 seconds later it says this computer is already Authorized

So I open the Photos App on my iMac and all my photos stored on the computer are there.

When I click on Import>iPhone it says no photos.

I searched and was taken here.

Saw all the steps you all recommended

Didn't feel like doing that.

So I hit ⌘ + q to quit the Photos App

Reopened Photos and it loaded the Photos on my iPhone.

I chose to import and delete after importing.

Thankfully I did not need to restart my phone, do a weird dance to get reception, nor stand on my head to get it to work.

Hopefully these steps work for others with this weird issue.

I'm having this problem for the first time (iPhone 6+ running whatever the most recent IOS is, iMac running 10.12.6 Sierra). Photos sees some photos, but not all. There is a whole bunch I shot a couple of weeks ago that it refuses to see, although it has imported photos from just before and just after I shot them. I've restarted Photos, I've restarted the phone, and I've restarted the iMac. Still happening.

Okay, so I have iCloud enabled. How do I get the photos from iCloud to my iMac desktop machine? I don't have enough room on the phone to download them to it and then to Photos on the iMac. That also doesn't explain why photos taken before and after the missing ones have imported into Photos...

again

-If you have iCloud Photo Library enabled on the iPhone you will not see all photos for USB import

Either enable iCPL on the phone and the Mac and use it or do not enable it on the Phone and use USB import - you can not mix ICPL and USB import sucessfully

LN

The traditional way to transfer pictures from iPhone 7 to Mac is using iPhoto which you know about *********. Plug your iPhone or iPad into the Mac if it's not already, and you'll see the appropriate icon appear in iPhoto's left-hand menu bar under DEVICES. Click the iPhone and you'll see information about all the snaps on there, together with the option to import selected photos, or to import all of them (250 in our case) at once. Select the option you prefer. Therefore, your iPhone 7 pictures can be transferred to Mac. On the other hand, you can apply iTunes to backup or sync your iPhone 7 pictures to save them.

<Link Edited by Host>

The traditional way to transfer pictures from iPhone 7

Except that iPhoto was discontinued over two years ago and this question is not about iPhoto but about Photos which is totally different due to the use of iCloud - three years ago that was a good answer - it no longer is

LN

After months of my wife's phone dumping photos with no problem (iCloud Photo Library has been on), only 2 of our 5 days out east showed up on the mac. Following the steps below, as her iPhone prepared to airdrop them to my iPad, they showed up on the Mac. I rewrote step 3 and 5 for clarity

1. Select the pictures on the iPhone that are not showing up in Photos.

2. Tap the share button

3. Turn on a second iPhone or iPad with AirDrop on.

4. Select airdrop

5. As airdrop prepared the photos, they also showed up in Photos.

6. Select Import all new Photos.

Hi, has anyone found a way to fix this issue yet? I have same problem - when I plug my 6S plus into either my Mac or my MacBook Air, neither can see the photos on my phone.

My 6S is updated to 11.2, the Mac is running High Sierra 10.13.1 & the MacBook is on OS X Yosemite 10.10.5.

This is driving me nuts as I have loads of photos & videos that need to come off as I am out of storage, Air Drop takes forever to do & the media all takes too long to load onto email or transfer to files.

Apple, this is a major issue - please sort it out!

Thanks

I got a solution by coincidence
I did the Airdrop way and while I am importing the photos from downloads to Photos on Mac, My Iphone 6s was still connected to Macbook, Photos gave me the option to choose from Downloads or Iphone to Import photos from!
I changed the option from a tab on the top left in Photos and it worked!