iOS photo import to a mac performs poorly

I do not think apple cares about this issue. They want us to use their cloud.

Why make transferring photos from your iPhone to an iMac so hard? Why is it not smart enough to tell me what is taking so long? I am telling you, it used to be VERY VERY VERY simple to do this. Now it doesn't work at all and apple doesn't care.

Teddy9898. did you get your answer?

I have been using various models of iPhone from like 6 to currently 15 and been saving all my iPhones photos on my iMac. I DO NOT want to save on the 'cloud'. I prefer a physical computer in my house to keep photos. I realize the convince of the cloud, but prefer local photo storage.

Anyway, it used to be a very simple and fast way to transfer photos from my iPhone to iMAC. Plus phone with usb, open photo, and select import new. And within a few minutes any new photos from iPhone automatically moved to my photo.

NOW, it seems like this doesn't work anymore. You would think apple would make things easier as time went on. Rather than making the transfer even more efficient, they are making it more difficult. It is like they WANT this to not work. they want you to use the could.. I'm not a conspiracist in general, but I feel like that's the answer to most things like this. 'Just move your photos to the could and this will solve the transfer issue'.

Guys - skip the photos download and use the ImageCapture app that comes with the Mac OS. Light years faster .. although still not super fast but you'll be pleasantly surprised. And then import to Photos.

Hello teddy9898,

There are a few things that can impact transfer speeds of your photos. If you're connecting your iPhone directly to your Mac, we recommend making sure you use the cable that came with your iPhone or a cable that supports a higher transfer rate. Not all cables transfer data and not all cables that do transfer data transfer it at the same rates.

Alternatively, if you use iCloud Photos on your iPhone, you can turn on iCloud Photos on your Mac to sync your photos. Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

Thanks.

Hey there teddy9898,

We use iCloud Photos, and it's great since we see any edits made on one device sync, along with new photos/videos being synced on both our own iPhone/Mac. The article shared earlier explains how iCloud works in more depth: Set up and use iCloud Photos

As what you described seems like expected behavior as mentioned by the earlier messages, should you wish to submit product feedback for Apple to consider, you can submit it here: Product Feedback

Cheers!

We are not Apple. There is no point in complaining here. Leave feedback for Apple at this site:

Feedback - Photos - Apple

There may be a bit of misunderstanding about iCloud. You say:

I DO NOT want to save on the 'cloud'. I prefer a physical computer in my house to keep photos.

I use iCloud to transfer pictures among my devices, but all my pictures are stored on my Mac. They are also stored in iCloud, but my Mac is, for me, the primary storage. It's true that you don't have to keep all your pictures locally but, like you, I'm way more comfortable having full control over the pictures. And I find the use of iCloud to be way simpler than the old cable business.

On a Mac we can have multiple Libraries. One option would be to have a Library only for transferring pictures. The pictures would transfer to your Mac very quickly, and later you can copy those to another Library, and erase the pictures from the transfer Library. If you transfer fewer than maybe 500 pictures at a time, this would be free, since you get 5GB of storage for no cost.

Let Apple know what you prefer, but I'm betting that cable transfer is on the way out.

Hi teddy9898,

It's expected that AirDrop would be significantly faster than your USB connection on iPhone 15.

iPhone 15 is only capable of USB 2.0 speeds for data transfer, which will make this process much slower.

If you have several gigabytes of photos this is expected behavior. This isn't a limitation of photos, but rather a limitation of the USB transfer rate.

If you would rather not upload to Photos with AirDrop, you can use the syncing function with iCloud as mentioned as well.

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities.

I've experienced the same problem. It takes forever for pictures I took w/ my iPhone to show up, via Cloud, on my MacBook Air. And that's when I'm at home on my WiFi network. Exasperating if you want to use MacBook to compose email & attach photos available on yr iPhone.

YES! Thank you! I forgot about image capture. I've been fighting with Airdrop and Photos for image imports to my iMac for over 5 years. I import around 400 photos a day for work and this can be really frustrating when airdrop decides to take 20 minutes to prepare or the Photos app loads images like a webpage with a 256k modem. Image capture imports photos fast like iPhoto used to.

Thank you! Thank you!

And for the record, If I shot a DNG on my iPhone then I use photos to process it out because it always looks better than what I can achieve in Lightroom.