Photos app keeps importing same photos

I've had this same problem over the years, not nearly to the extent others have had this issue.

Some things I've noticed:

1. When attempting to import duplicates, I get a message that Filename: "randomlettersnumbers.peg" Reason: Couldn't load an asset.
2. I did show duplicates in my Photos library of the images in question already.
3. Single clicking on an image in question under Import > "myPhone" would give me the EXIF \ Metadata for it.
4. Filename would be identical to the .peg extension, but had a .jpeg instead (I think someone else has noticed this also).
5. The date of the photo shown in the metadata allowed me to search my connected iPhone, via Photos on the iPhone itself, locate the photo by date.
   1. There the photo would show a few duplicates.
   2. Some were cropped images (memes mostly, because, memes).
   3. I randomly deleted photos from the iPhone, and within one or two guesses, the photo to import would disappear in the photos import window.
6. I had to do the above process 11 times to clear my duplicates.
7. If I hazard to guess, the .peg extension might be software glitch that Photos\iPhoto doesn't deal with well, or maybe it uses ".peg" to fail to when trying to name a file an already existing "unique" .jpeg by accident.

My issue is "resolved" but not well, and I'd be pretty annoyed if this were anything more than the few images I had to deal with.

For anyone reading this, echoing what others have mentioned, file a ticket with Apple, feel free to reference this thread, as far as I know, Apple staff does not frequent this board, this is just user to user.

Same thing started happening to me on my Macbook Pro. Updated to El Capitan in the last week. When I connect iPhone 6, about 40 photos/videos that have already been imported try importing again, and a number of them fail to import with the message "couldn't load an asset".

What I've noticed: This only happens to photos and videos others took and sent to me; no pictures I've taken are trying to import dupes. Unlike dso371, the duplicates that don't fail to import do in fact show up in the library. Some of the duplicate videos that imported show up as videos (with the correct icon etc.), but wouldn't play, so don't delete your previous copies! The other thing is that duplicate imported videos that were taken with an iPhone5S (and sent to my iPhone6, but already had copies on my Macbook) now have .h264 in their 'get info' above the camera icon, whereas the original imports don't. I assume that has something to do with why they're not being detected as already there.

Not sure if it's related, but my iPhone appears to be trying to upload all photos to my iCloud library, again, even though they're already there. Despite this, my iCloud library doesn't seem to be getting the duplicates.

Same problem for me - really annoying. Also it only occurs for photos from other people.

Hi all,

Yep, same story, on my Macbook Pro, running El Capitan (and Yosemite before), whenever I connect my iPhone 6S, the Photos app imports the same photos repeatedly. My original photos are duplicating & I can verify I have 4 copies of each original photos, in ADDITION TO HDR copies. I have turned off HDR to prevent any HDR duplicates.

This seems to be an ongoing problem with PHOTOS. I am at an Apple Retail store in Sydney, & there does not seem to be a known way to prevent this. HELP PLEASE!!!

I'm just replying to keep this thread alive. I don't know why Apple hasn't addressed this problem. What happened to insanely great products? Photos.app has so many little bugs and annoyances, e.g., doesn't even know about events any more like iPhotos used to, cannot drag and drop photos from my albums into other applications (have to put on the desktop first), and beyond that, it seems to be getting the Mail.app treatment, meaning it will never get any better over time and bugs will just persist forever without any comment. They probably are down to a single developer on it.

+1 this has been affecting my ipads and iphones for sometime.

Along with the fix on the import, it would be good if there was a feature/tool introduced to remove the duplicated imported files from the Photos.library-- as the duplicated videos and imaages just waste space...

TO tell Apple things use this form - http://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

and for duplicates look at PowerPhotos-

LN

Nice to be able to remove duplicates, but nicer if Apple would fix this glaring bug. I'm sure there are many more people with this problem that don't know about this forum. It is very frustrating dealing with Apple when something breaks, as they really don't do much to help. Just silence.

+1

UGH!!!!

Same problem.

I don't trust iCloud to securely store my photos. I don't trust Photos to work on my Mac. I no longer use my iPhone or iPad to take or view photos anymore. Seriously, this problem has brought using iCloud and Photos to a halt for me. For some reason, this problem has not carried over to my iPhone.

Every time I plug in my iPad to sync it, Photos claims I have anywhere from 857 - 1,436 new photos to import. I have NO new photos. These "new" photos are already in iCloud (I checked through Safari and iCloud on the web; I checked on my devices and computer).

If I import these "new" photos, I have duplicates. I also have LOTS of photos that won't import because they are supposedly PEG files (this is some sort of game I have no clue about and have never owned or used). Maybe they're JPEGs that lost the "J" (I'm grasping at straws now). The kicker is that when I plug in my iPad again, Photos claims that most of the photos I imported are new again. I now have THOUSANDS of duplicates that I need to sift through - I HATE this.

I've tried going back to a factory reset on the iPad, but the problem remains - maybe because I restored my iPad from a backup?

I've tried turning iCloud photos on the iPad on/off, syncing, resetting the iPad, all in every possible combination I can think of.

UPDATE: This is now happening on my iPhone.

FYI: Forgot to mention equipment info: Mac Pro (El Capitan 10.11.4); iPad Air 2 (iOS 9.3.1); iPhone 6s (iOS 9.3.1)

UPDATE 2:

Another failed attempt:

I spoke to an Apple employee at the store, who said they weren't able to really help because they couldn't see the syncing process. He did recommend that I turn off Photos on both my iPad and iPhone, sync them, back them up, and check to be sure they didn't have any connection to photos in the cloud. Once that was done, I deleted all photos remaining on both devices. Again with the syncing, backing up, and restarting the devices. At the moment of truth when I went to sync my iPad and check the Photos app, I was again asked to import over 1,000 photos that I know are already in the cloud.

I don't know if this is important, but I just realized a discrepancy between the number of photos on my iPad and what's in iCloud. My iPad has 22,837 images, whereas the cloud has only 20,276.

UPDATE 2:

Another failed attempt:

I spoke to an Apple employee at the store, who said they weren't able to really help because they couldn't see the syncing process. He did recommend that I turn off Photos on both my iPad and iPhone, sync them, back them up, and check to be sure they didn't have any connection to photos in the cloud. Once that was done, I deleted all photos remaining on both devices. Again with the syncing, backing up, and restarting the devices. At the moment of truth when I went to sync my iPad and check the Photos app, I was again asked to import over 1,000 photos that I know are already in the cloud.

Backing up my iPad is taking over 2 hours. Is this related?

UPDATE 3:

My iPhone 6s is now affected. I just imported 86 photos that are part of the same group of photos I keep importing from my iPad. I haven't been deleting the photos, so I now have 3,000+ duplicates.

Yeap. Confirmed is happening to me as well. I also have a failed import window popup for a specific file I have no idea where to check. This is bad, Apple! Bad. Apple developer, if you need stuff on my Mac to solve the problem, let me know. I'm willing to help, but please fix it. This is getting annoying.