Photos importing issue

App & System Services Core OS Beta macOS

Created Jul ’19

Replies 33

Boosts 5

Views 21k

Participants 42

I have installed iOS 13 PB2 on my iPhone with Catalina PB2 Beta on my Mac.

I took a bunch of photos and videos, wanted to import them into my photo library on an external disk, but it never goes through. I tried clicking on the iPhone when it’s plugged in and importing new photos, it looks like the Photo app does something but never imports them. In fact, photo libraries on this external disk show the same problem while those created on my Mac work normally.

Not sure what’s causing it, can it be the beta version bug or Apple does it on purpose?

rclarkburns OP

Jan ’25

My case was using an external SSD and getting the import error on certain images. I realized if I opened the image in Preview and saved it then I could import those images without issue. I thought maybe using something like touch in the Terminal would work to update the modified date of the file but this didn't work. What did work was simply copying the files. Either copying them to a new location on the external SSD or from the external SSD to my internal storage. Both scenarios worked. I'm guessing there is some file metadata that is changed or written during this process. Annoying but at least it worked. Hope this helps someone else out!

TL;DR Copy the image(s) and then attempt to import the copied image(s). Copying an entire folder with images works as well.

maddy94 OP

Jan ’25

Anyone having issues with transferring photos from iPhone to USB, watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qozSYxdaC4M

MartinMuc2 OP

Jan ’25

For me the workaround was using image capture. I was not able get the Photos app to work. MacOS 15.2 (24C101), iPhone 12 mini

edawgatl OP

Feb ’25

this fixed it for me, thanks!

KarlHungus89 OP

Feb ’25

Still without a solution. Apple really doesn't seem to be caring at all, there are so many threads on this on the internet. Mabe Apple is trying to push people to pay for their cloud services? What a joke!

ArcFuture OP

Mar ’25

Apple Image Capture seems to also fly though the filenames on screen very quickly and then actually give me an error that says "unknown error photos were not able to be imported"

Photos app used to be able to make some strides sometimes but ... seriously why can't MacOS OR IPHONE see what i wrong and diagnose / fix the issue?? APPLE

Suhas_333 OP

Mar ’25

I finally found something that worked for me

I had around 3 cinematic video files that just would not import, tried re-connecting, restarting devices.

I then noticed that when connected to my Mac, if I tried playing that video on my iPhone, it showed the "i" icon and said "An unknown error occurred while playing the video."

So I duplicated the video, and then re-connected to my Mac and boom! It finished importing within 5sec. Surprisingly now it was able to import both the new and original version, and I was able to hit play on both on my iPhone. Weird glitch, but I'm happy I found a way out

JonDanSau OP

May ’25

And now it's 2025!! I finally got it working by holding option key when open photos app - From there I created a new library - all imports should work to that new library.