iPhone photos don’t show up in iPhoto

[Miguel José]

When I plug in my iPhone 6 plus running the latest iOS to my mid-2010 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.9.5, iPhoto opens. It sees my iPhone but doesn’t see any of the photos on it. “No photos.” Of course there are photos on the iPhone that I want to transfer to iPhoto.

Has anyone else encountered this problem? Does anyone know a fix for it?

Thank you!!!!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

-Are they photos you took with the iPhone, or ones that you had previously synced?
-Have you tried viewing the iPhone using the Image Capture app?

C

 

[Miguel José]

Yes, I took the photos with my iPhone. In the past I’ve been able to transfer photos to iPhoto without any problem. No, I haven’t tried viewing the iPhone with Image Capture.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

-Are they photos you took recently and are in the Camera Roll, or are they photos you took previously and are synced to other albums on the iPhone?
-What happens if you take a photo now and then connect the iPhone?
-Do you use iCloud - Photo Stream at all?

C

 

[Miguel José]

-Are they photos you took recently and are in the Camera Roll, or are they photos you took previously and are synced to other albums on the iPhone?
Both.

-What happens if you take a photo now and then connect the iPhone?
Same thing. iPhoto opens automatically when I plug in the iPhone. It takes a minute for the iPhone to show up, but iPhoto says there are no photos.

-Do you use iCloud - Photo Stream at all?
No, neither. Some of my iTunes music is apparently in iCloud, but I didn’t intentionally put it there. If I have photos in iCloud I’m not aware of it, but I think I don’t have any there.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

I am thinking it may be an incompatibility between iOS 10 and iPhoto. I would try connecting the iPhone, opening the Image Capture app, and see if the photos show there for import. If so, then iPhoto may be the issue, and you may have to upgrade to Yosemite or Sierra to use the new Photos app instead of iPhoto.

C

 

[Miguel José]

Thank you for your continuing help with this problem, Cory. Per your latest advice I plugged the iPhone into my Macbook Pro and was about to open Image Capture. iPhoto opened automatically, as it does whenever the iPhone is plugged in. I attended to some other small task before opening Image Capture, but when I looked back at my computer screen—before opening Image Capture—I saw that iPhoto was displaying all the photos on my iPhone! Go figure! The only thing I did differently was that my external hard drive was not plugged in. I have a small iPhoto library on my Mac and a much larger one on the external HD.

So I unmounted the iPhone, quit iPhoto, mounted the external HD, and plugged in the iPhone again. iPhoto, the one on the Mac, opened again, but this time it showed no photos on the iPhone, which is the original problem. I then opened Image Capture. It too showed “0 items” on the iPhone.

I then unmounted the iPhone, quite Image Capture and iPhoto, and unmounted the external HD. Then I plugged in the iPhone again. I expected iPhoto to open and show me the iPhone photos, but even after unmounting the external HD iPhoto did not display the iPhone photos. So I again unmounted the iPhone. Then I restarted the Mac and plugged in the iPhone. IPhoto opened but still did not see any photos on the iPhone.

Finally, I powered off the iPhone, powered it up again, and plugged it in. iPhoto still did not see the photos. I have over 250 photos on the iPhone, some of which were taken as recently as yesterday.

So I got lucky one time for no apparent reason.

I am reluctant to upgrade the Mac OS because I have other applications that I frequently use which are probably not compatible with systems beyond Mavericks. One such ap is iWorks ‘09, especially Pages 4.3 and Numbers 2.3. (Pages 5 is not an option. It looks like a dumb-down ap to me. And although I use Word when necessary to send documents to my clients, it—like other Microsoft products—is unnecessarily obtuse. I despise it!) I realize I will eventually have to upgrade, but something keeps telling me don’t do it yet. Not yet.

MJ