For many
years,
including on OS X 10.9 (Snow
Leopard)
and on OS X 10.11 (El
Capitan),
I have relied on AutoImporter.app
to automatically import photos
from my iPhone when it is connected to my Mac.
Unfortunately AutoImporter.app
stopped working when I upgraded
to iOS
10.3.1 --
it launches, but does not import anything, when the phone is connected
while logged in (whether or not the phone is locked). It seems
like this issue might have started with with iOS
10.2
-- but I went straight from 9.x to 10.3.1, so do not know if 10.2
or 10.3 first introduced the problem.
In my case even logging in with the phone connected and
unlocked
does not seem to work for me on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan). From
reading bug reports (and some hints in a Reddit
thread)
it appears the issue is that AutoImporter.app
is starting correctly,
but is unable to get a list of photos to import -- which is consistent
with opening, but showing a 100% progress bar immediately then
closing.
Manually importing into
Photos.app
(with Photos.app
auto-launched) appears to be Apple's official answer, but I do not
want a manual import -- or to use Photos.app
. Supposedly
the iCloud My Photo Stream
feature can get in the way, but I do not have any iCloud features
turned on, and other users report it made no differnce for them.
So my current pick is that something changed around enumerating the
list of photos on the iPhone, and no one bothered to upgrade
AutoImporter.app
to match :-( Some users report upgrading to
recent versions of macOS Sierra (but only recent versions) made
it work again -- however I am not about to embark on a major OS
upgrade at present, just in the hope of making this one thing work
again.
For now I am trying to remember to periodically use "Image Capture.app
"
to manually import new images off my iPhone as a backup (in addition
to the automatic copy in the iTunes backup of my phone). Sadly this is
rather less convenient than the automatically running import.
To use "Image Capture.app
" to do a manual import:
connect the iPhone to the computer
open the "
Image Capture.app
"select the phone from the list of devices, and if necessary enter the passcode on the phone to unlock it and grant access
highlight the photos since the last import (:-( ), eg determined by the file names or date
make sure the destination setting at the bottom is "Pictures"
make sure that the "Make subfolders per camera" setting is ticked (to replicate how I had
AutoImporter.app
set up)make sure "Delete after import" is not ticked (in the bottom left area)
Then click on "Import" at the bottom right.
It appears that "Image Capture.app
" may recognise the photos
which are already imported, once everything else is set up (eg,
they have a green tick), so the step of selecting the new photos
may not be necessary -- or may be able to be guided by those green
ticks -- but for now I am still doing that step of determining what
to import manually, in order to have more control over what is
imported.
Hopefully eventually there is an OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) update that restores this useful automatic import functionality.