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DeeRun Author

Level 1

23 points

Connecting iPhone to Mac – Photos app asks to IMPORT thousands of photos which are already on iCloud Photo

Recently switched on iCloud Photos to sync photos to all my devices. Everything uploaded fine and distributed photos to my iPhone and iPad without much problem.

However when I now connect my iPhone or iPad to my Mac, the Photos app asks to "Import" thousands of "new photos" from my phone which are already on my devices and were imported from iCloud Photos.

Is this normal behaviour?

iPhone XS, iOS 13

Posted on Jan 2, 2020 2:37 AM

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

196,989 points

Posted on Jan 2, 2020 7:35 AM

This is unfortunately normal. You should not mix the two method of importing - iCloud Photos and importing by USB. When your iPhone is downloading photos from iCloud, they will continually be appearing as new files, because they are not exactly the same files you already synced to your Mac from iCloud.

What are the settings on your Phone in the Settings > Photos >TRANSFER TO MAC OR PC section? Is it set to "Most Compatible" or "Keep originals"? If you are using "Most Compatible"; try to change this to "Keep Original"? Then you may be seeing less "New" photos, because the iPhone will not convert each and every image from HEIC to JPEG.

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Connecting iPhone to Mac – Photos app asks to IMPORT thousands of photos which are already on iCloud Photo

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