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Photos (Mac) wants to reimport photos (iPhone)-DUPLICATES!

Hello-I tried posting this question in the Mac section as affecting photos on there, but it relates to my iPhone,


I moved from iPhoto to Photos when it came out. I have this annoying problem though-everytime i connect my iPhone 6 Plus-it wants to re-import pictures that are already on my iMac. They appear in the lower panel as 'new photos'. They are not-they are in my library on the iMac already. The photos on my iPhone came from iCloud, which in turn were from the iMac. If I do it-it just creates a duplicate in my library.


Is this the same behaviour for everyone else? There is a row of photos along the top of Photos app on Mac, correctly identified as 'already imported' when I connect my iPhone, but for some reason-there is a ton below it asking to be imported.


I have wiped my phone clean-but when i turn on iCloud Photo Library the problem comes back.


My iMac was on Yosemite and now on El Capitan (same problem on both) and my iPhone was on iOS8 and 9 (same problem on both also).


Edit-I've narrowed it down to the fact if I view a photo on my iPad or iPhone and you get the white download-ball symbol in the bottom right corner-when you next plug iDevice into Mac and Photos opens up-it treats it as a brand new picture and asks if I want to import it. This can't be normal?


Thanks.

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), iOS 9.0.2, null

Posted on Oct 6, 2015 10:47 AM

Reply
4 replies

Oct 30, 2015 10:55 AM in response to cos constantinou

Gah-this problem never ends.

I've worked out that if I view an already imported photo on my iPhone-its seems to download it to the phone, then when i next connect my iPhone to my iMac-Apple Photots wants to re-import it as new.

Even though it's already in the library on the Mac....

I've tried wiping my iPhone clean and restarting from new and it still does this. It also does it (to a lesser extent) on my iPad.

Anyone clever out there can work this out for me?

Sep 11, 2016 5:43 AM in response to cos constantinou

Yes this in incredibly frustrating. my solution is this - I am going to stop using iCloud as it does not do what it it supposed. For example - It is not a back-up, if you delete a photo from your phone, it will remove it from the cloud. I am going to old school back up and use an external hard drive - I am not even going to use time capsule as I have had no end of trouble with that.

Photos (Mac) wants to reimport photos (iPhone)-DUPLICATES!

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