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Import of photos from iPhone to iMac hangs "Preparing to import from..."

My photo library is too big to fit on my 256 GB iPhoneX, my wife's much smaller library doesn't fit on her older iPhone SE. However, since a bout a year of well update MacOS I cannot move new photos from either iPhone to my iMac. I reinstalled the system on my iMac and got as far as the start of an import and then my whole system went down and now I am back to the hanging notification, false promise, that the iMac is Preparing to import ... It appears to be a problem on the iMac MacOS side of things since neither iPhone can transfer photos.

I do not know how to replicate a bluetooth transfer as one user suggests, my attempts have been by hard wire traditional USB A


iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jun 18, 2021 3:59 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 19, 2021 12:37 AM

Are you using iCloud Photos on your iPhones? Then the "preparing" may take several hours. With my iPhone 11 Pro Max and 550000 photos in iCloud I had to wait for ten hours, before the preparing finished and the photos appeared in the Import pane in Photos. If you are using iCloud Photos on the iPhones, it will be much quicker to download the photos directly from iCloud, either with iCloud Photos on the Mac, or from your iCloud websites at www.icloud.com


2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 19, 2021 12:37 AM in response to stevemeans

Are you using iCloud Photos on your iPhones? Then the "preparing" may take several hours. With my iPhone 11 Pro Max and 550000 photos in iCloud I had to wait for ten hours, before the preparing finished and the photos appeared in the Import pane in Photos. If you are using iCloud Photos on the iPhones, it will be much quicker to download the photos directly from iCloud, either with iCloud Photos on the Mac, or from your iCloud websites at www.icloud.com


Import of photos from iPhone to iMac hangs "Preparing to import from..."

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