Some users report an issue in which Photos (or iPhoto on older OS) no longer recognizes the iPhone as a camera. Consequently, you are unable to import images from the device to your Windows or Mac computer.
We see this problem most often after an iOS, macOS or OS X software update, or following a firmware update. And of course, sometimes it’s just totally random.
Here’s what you can do if the Photos app or iPhoto won’t recognize your iPhone.
Fixes for Photos or iPhoto Won’t Recognize iPhone
You can try several fixes if iPhoto or Photos won’t recognize your iPhone, and we’ll run through some of the best options below.
Make Sure Your Computer Is Trusted
When you connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to a computer for the first time or after a reinstall, you might see an alert that asks whether you trust the computer.
Confirm on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod that it trusts your Mac. You will need to enter your device’s code if you’ve enabled two-factor authentication (2FA).
Close Final Cut Pro or iMovie
In some cases, Final Cut Pro or iMovie interferes with Photos’ ability to recognize the iPhone.
Try quitting both of these applications on your Mac, and then disconnect and reconnect your iPhone. Your device will likely also run more quickly when you quit these programs and focus on your iPhone.
Manually Select Your Device
If Photos does not automatically recognizes and open your device, try instead to select your device from the View menu or sidebar manually. Below is an image of where you’ll find the View menu.
Meanwhile, here’s what the sidebar will look like…
Either go to the top menu or the left sidebar in Photos, and choose Devices. Then, choose your device. Wait for your photos to populate.
Don’t See the Photos App Sidebar?
For macOS versions, try viewing the Photos app in Full-Screen Mode by selecting View > Enter Full Screen or using the keyboard shortcut of Command + Control+ F.
Also, make sure that Always Show Toolbar and Sidebar in Full Screen is enabled for your View settings.
For older OS X, to display the sidebar in Photos, choose View > Show Sidebar, or press Command-Option-S.
On MacBooks, try hovering your mouse over the left edge of the Photos app window until you see a crosshair. Then, drag that crosshair to the right to reveal the Photo app sidebar.
Change Photo Settings
If using iOS 11 and above, which will be a large number of people reading this guide, it’s possible that your Mac doesn’t recognize the HEIC format for images. This is also why you may encounter problems when trying to open or import HEIC files on your computer, especially when compared to JPEG images.
So, turning off the new HEIC image file format often does the trick.
On your iPhone, go to Settings > Camera > Formats and select Most Compatible.
Check Your Cables!
Make sure that you use the original cable that came with your iPhone. If that’s not available, check that your cable is Apple Certified Made For iPhone (MFI.)
A few readers tell us that simply switching the lightning plug ends around worked. So, remove the cable from both the Mac and the iPhone, then swap sides.
What we mean by this is plug the end that was going into the Mac into the iPhone and vice-versa.
Reset Location and Privacy Info
On your iPhone:
Go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset.
From the dropdown menu, choose Reset Location & Privacy. Performing this action resets all connections between your iPhone and your Mac.
Restart!
Sometimes, fixing this problem is as simple as restarting your iPhone and/or Mac. This action refreshes the connection between the devices and forces iTunes to scan for all connected devices.
If a restart didn’t do the trick, try a forced reboot on the iPhone while it’s connected to iTunes.
Perform a Forced Restart
On an iPhone 6S or below plus iPads with Home buttons & iPod Touches, press Home and Power at the same time until you see the Apple logo.
For iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo.
On an iPhone X Series, iPads without a Home button, or iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Then, press and promptly release the Volume Down button. Finally, press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo.
Delete Photos
It appears that the presence of some imported images (or strangely enough screenshots) taken on the iPhone can cause this problem.
Try deleting all pictures on your iPhone except for those that were made with the device’s camera, then disconnect and reconnect your iPhone.
It’s worth backing up your images before doing this on an external hard drive. This tip can be time-consuming, so we recommend looking at other options before trying it.
Turn Your iPhone Off and Back On When Still Connected
Failing the above, try opening Photos app/iPhoto and connecting your iPhone, before then turning the iPhone off. Wait a few seconds and turn it back on.
Contact Apple Support
If none of these tips work, you might want to contact Apple directly.
Consider reporting your problem to Apple via this link. You can also use the Apple Support app.
Other Stuff That Might Work
If the Photos app doesn’t recognize your iPhone, you might wish to consider a host of other possible things to try and consider…
Plug in your device to your Mac and then do a soft reset (forced restart.) See if your device now shows up in Photos.
On Import options, uncheck Enable camera uploads for and under Sync options, deselect Photos from iPhoto (untick the checkbox).
Check that there are no other users logged into your Mac. If so, log out of those user accounts and then try again. You may need to restart your Mac with just that single user account active.
It might sound stupid, but make sure your Mac has enough free space to import any photos!
Check your iCloud settings on the phone and Mac computer. If you have iCloud Photo syncing enabled, try toggling it off (even if temporarily). Do this by going to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos. Here, toggle the Sync this iPhone option off.
Try These Tips if Your Mac Photos App Doesn’t Recognize Your iPhone
Many of us love taking photos, whether they’re for casual use or we’re into the more professional side of things. Regardless of your reasons, you’ll likely end up importing a lot of these onto your iPhone — if you don’t take them from there in the first place. So, customizing everything in Photos (and making sure that items sync across all your Apple devices) will likely be near the top of your list.
If you’re struggling with the Photos app not recognizing your iPhone, the tips we’ve outlined in this guide should hopefully have helped you out. You can always contact Apple’s support team if you need further guidance.
Danny is a freelance writer who has been using Apple products for over a decade. He’s written for some of the largest technology publications on the web and previously worked as an in-house writer before carving his own route. Danny grew up in the UK, but now writes about tech from his Scandinavian base.
Not a single one of the “Fixes” mentioned apply to my 7+ iPhone. There is no Devices item in any iPhoto menu or sidebar. Aside from “Import to Library” there is no “IMPORT” in the menu bar or anywhere else for that matter either. I’m using this on an iMac version 10.9.5 and an older IMac and an AIR which only downloads a few of the images on the phone, with no way to select more. There are no updates available for any machine. I wonder if Apple really cares about the poor software they provide.
I had the exact same problem – with 15 year old iMac and iPhone X – the photos apps in iMac desktop stopped seeing the device. I phoned Apple support and spoke to a hopeless man in Dublin who blamed the problem on the age of my computer. He was all doom and gloom. Couldn’t even explain why the iTunes ‘saw’ the device but the image tools didn’t. Today I read the guidance this website provided – I ‘reset privacy settings’ and hurrah – all working fine now. There was an error message that the PTP camera was not working. I blame this issue on the iphoneX upgrade software.
Thank you . very comprehensive . Solved problem. i phone 7 linked to macbook after turning off, reopening itunes and photos, plugging in phone and trying again.
Simple and effective. Clear instructions.
I have an iPhone 6 and am trying to transfer photos from my iPhone to our Mac computer using MacOS Mojave 10.14.6
When I go to Photos, my iPhone appears under Devices but when I select “Import New Photos”, I get “the file is unrecognizable in this format”
My husband and I share this Mac desktop computer.
Why is this so complicated? We purchase apple products thinking all would be seamless. This is very problematic.
I can “Airdrop” a few photos at a time but this is takes too much of my time.
I have tried all of the suggestions to get my iPhone photos to my iMac: iCloud on/off, restarting, updating all the apps/software, reconnecting, resetting location, trusting the computer, deleting my screenshots, ejecting and reconnecting, exiting iTunes, etc.
When I connect my phone (using an Apple USB cord) only 3 of my 2,000 photos/videos show up.
I do not want to manually airdrop or download since this will take forever.
I couldn’t see “Devices” shown in the View menu but, using the view menu, I opened the sidebar and my iPhone was listed there under “Import”
View > Open Sidebar > [find My iPhone in the sidebar menu]
When I had used the Import menu, from the top bar, my iphone hadn’t been shown in the device list.
Hey my post is 1.26.19 (in case you’re looking for a more recent comment)
This was probably the best article of ideas to help with this problem! Thanks!
I actually did 2 things and it worked.
1) I clicked to eject my phone from iTunes and closed the iTunes app.
2) My iPhone didn’t show up in Photos after that, BUT I clicked on View in the Photos toolbar, and then clicked Devices, and then Apple iPhone. (It’s like Photos is defaulted to hide my phone from automatically showing up in Photos when I plug it in???)
SO, I am wondering if I actually changed the settings at some point (and I think I did) so Photos wouldn’t open automatically every time I plugged my iPhone into my Mac?
And possibly this has caused my Photos app to not “open” or “show” my iPhone when I open Photos?
Just a thought.
I’ll try to see if I can change the settings… because it’s likely something I changed and not a hiccup in my system
If you want Photos to open automatically when you connect your iPhone, click the name of the device under Devices in the sidebar, and then tick the Open Photos checkbox.
iPhoto does see the photos though- eventually- although, as others say here, only once I have ejected the iPhone from iTunes – but it still won’t import.
Error message on trying import says ‘unrecognized format’.
I have no screenshots on the phone.
I do have some short videos but also can’t seem to get those into imovie either, and there’s one particularly that I don’t want to lose.
My iPhone doesn’t give a ‘formats’ option under settings> camera and doesn’t give a slide on /off button for HDR either.
But below HDR it gives an on/off slider for ‘keep normal photo’, which I have on, but I don’t think this is instead of HDR, as underneath this it says “HDR blends the best parts of three separate exposures into a single photo.
Save the normally exposed photo in addition to the HDR version.”
I don’t want to lose these photos as they are from a particular event.
On your computer, close all open apps and also log out of all users but one. Restart both your phone and your computer. Then, try using a different cable and a different USB port on your computer.
If that doesn’t help, plug your iPhone into your computer and perform a force restart while it’s plugged in–see if your computer and the Photos App now recognizes your iPhone.
Perform a Forced Restart
On an iPhone 6S or below plus all iPads & iPod Touches, press Home and Power at the same time until you see the Apple logo
For iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo
On an iPhone X Series or iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Then press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Finally, press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo
Can you provide us with these details:
1) iOS version your iPhone runs (go to Settings > General > About)
2) macOS or Mac OS X version your Mac runs or if a Windows PC, what windows version
There is a problem with the recent update that causes both Safari and iPhoto to not open. iPhoto in Yosemite is apparently not launching after iTunes upgrade to 12.8.1
Check if you still have this file: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice
If so, isolate it in a folder on your desktop and then restart your Mac. See if Safari and iPhoto work.
If you back up your system, locate a backup from before the update to iTunes 12.8.1 and copy the folder for this location /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework and replace the newer version that’s there.
Alternatively, people found that updating to Mac OS X El Capitan or macOS Sierra solved all these problems. You could also try reinstalling Mac OS X Yosemite using recovery mode.
Yes, am still using Yosemite. Have renamed the mobile device file and safari came back. Photo’s and Itunes didn’t Already tried reinstalling Yosemite but with no success either. Will try to locate the backup and otherwise upgrade.
Thanks for the response!
Yvette
Yvettesays
Fixed all problems after upgrading to Mojave. Even have more disc space left now 😉
Yvette
Renesays
I tried the reset location settings and then click the “enter fullscreen” and suddenly the sidebar is there.
But if I went back to the normal sized (which before, showed the sidebar) the sidebar wont show up anymore…..
So, it sorta work I guess?
It really is absurd that Apple has these problems. This is WHY we buy Apple products, so we don’t have to deal with stuff like this. The ecosystem is failing and they need to lift their game big time.
Thank you so much; I have wasted all morning trying to put my photos on my computer, and it turned out that I had two screen shots on my phone. As soon as I deleted them, the photos started appearing in iPhoto, and I never would have come up with that on my own.
Hi I’m having the same issue!!! Have tried calling apple for support but they don’t even know whys wrong. It was working perfectly fine now iPhoto won’t open automatically when I connect my iphone. It doesn’t charge and iTunes won’t recognise it too! Please help somebody!!
Hi I’m having the same issue!!! Have tried calling apple for support but they don’t even know whys wrong. It was working perfectly fine now iPhoto won’t open automatically when I connect my phone. It doesn’t charge and iTunes won’t recognise it too! Please help somebody!!
I just had this happen and fixed it like this. I must’ve disconnected the phone while iTunes was open.
Open iTunes and wait for the phone to come up. Eject the phone. I had iPhoto running in the background and as soon as I ejected it from iTunes it showed up in iPhoto.
Sas says
Not a single one of the “Fixes” mentioned apply to my 7+ iPhone. There is no Devices item in any iPhoto menu or sidebar. Aside from “Import to Library” there is no “IMPORT” in the menu bar or anywhere else for that matter either. I’m using this on an iMac version 10.9.5 and an older IMac and an AIR which only downloads a few of the images on the phone, with no way to select more. There are no updates available for any machine. I wonder if Apple really cares about the poor software they provide.
Maj says
I had the exact same problem – with 15 year old iMac and iPhone X – the photos apps in iMac desktop stopped seeing the device. I phoned Apple support and spoke to a hopeless man in Dublin who blamed the problem on the age of my computer. He was all doom and gloom. Couldn’t even explain why the iTunes ‘saw’ the device but the image tools didn’t. Today I read the guidance this website provided – I ‘reset privacy settings’ and hurrah – all working fine now. There was an error message that the PTP camera was not working. I blame this issue on the iphoneX upgrade software.
Brett says
FINALLY! Tried so many of these but ejecting the device from iTunes while both iTunes and Photos were open worked. Thank You!
Katie says
FINALLY found the solution for Photos not recognizing my iPhone / photos.
I switched from a generic chord to the apple chord and it worked!!
Thank you for this information.
brian says
Thank you! This did the trick after I’d tried suggestions from other sites that didn’t work.
Robert Malone says
The hard reboot for the iPhone 7+ worked! Thank you.
elizabeth says
Thank you . very comprehensive . Solved problem. i phone 7 linked to macbook after turning off, reopening itunes and photos, plugging in phone and trying again.
Simple and effective. Clear instructions.
Karen says
I have an iPhone 6 and am trying to transfer photos from my iPhone to our Mac computer using MacOS Mojave 10.14.6
When I go to Photos, my iPhone appears under Devices but when I select “Import New Photos”, I get “the file is unrecognizable in this format”
My husband and I share this Mac desktop computer.
Why is this so complicated? We purchase apple products thinking all would be seamless. This is very problematic.
I can “Airdrop” a few photos at a time but this is takes too much of my time.
Please help.
Thank you.
Karen
Elizabeth Jones says
HI Karen,
Please check this setting: Settings > Photos > scroll down to Transfer to Mac or PC–select Automatic rather than Keep Originals.
If that’s not the issue, have you tried using the Image Capture app instead? It’s located in your Application folder and comes standard with macOS.
Liz
Christa F says
I have tried all of the suggestions to get my iPhone photos to my iMac: iCloud on/off, restarting, updating all the apps/software, reconnecting, resetting location, trusting the computer, deleting my screenshots, ejecting and reconnecting, exiting iTunes, etc.
When I connect my phone (using an Apple USB cord) only 3 of my 2,000 photos/videos show up.
I do not want to manually airdrop or download since this will take forever.
Any other suggestions?
Chris Covich says
I couldn’t see “Devices” shown in the View menu but, using the view menu, I opened the sidebar and my iPhone was listed there under “Import”
View > Open Sidebar > [find My iPhone in the sidebar menu]
When I had used the Import menu, from the top bar, my iphone hadn’t been shown in the device list.
Brandi Lott says
Hey my post is 1.26.19 (in case you’re looking for a more recent comment)
This was probably the best article of ideas to help with this problem! Thanks!
I actually did 2 things and it worked.
1) I clicked to eject my phone from iTunes and closed the iTunes app.
2) My iPhone didn’t show up in Photos after that, BUT I clicked on View in the Photos toolbar, and then clicked Devices, and then Apple iPhone. (It’s like Photos is defaulted to hide my phone from automatically showing up in Photos when I plug it in???)
SO, I am wondering if I actually changed the settings at some point (and I think I did) so Photos wouldn’t open automatically every time I plugged my iPhone into my Mac?
And possibly this has caused my Photos app to not “open” or “show” my iPhone when I open Photos?
Just a thought.
I’ll try to see if I can change the settings… because it’s likely something I changed and not a hiccup in my system
Love my Mac! Good luck!
Hope this helps someone. -B
SK says
Hi Brandi,
Thanks for sharing what works for you!
If you want Photos to open automatically when you connect your iPhone, click the name of the device under Devices in the sidebar, and then tick the Open Photos checkbox.
Sheila Ruth says
Thank you! Quitting and restarting iTunes and Photos, then connecting the phone, did the trick for me.
Benji's mum says
I had this problem.
Tried all these options but not resolved yet.
iPhoto does see the photos though- eventually- although, as others say here, only once I have ejected the iPhone from iTunes – but it still won’t import.
Error message on trying import says ‘unrecognized format’.
I have no screenshots on the phone.
I do have some short videos but also can’t seem to get those into imovie either, and there’s one particularly that I don’t want to lose.
My iPhone doesn’t give a ‘formats’ option under settings> camera and doesn’t give a slide on /off button for HDR either.
But below HDR it gives an on/off slider for ‘keep normal photo’, which I have on, but I don’t think this is instead of HDR, as underneath this it says “HDR blends the best parts of three separate exposures into a single photo.
Save the normally exposed photo in addition to the HDR version.”
I don’t want to lose these photos as they are from a particular event.
SK says
Hi Benji’s Mom,
On your computer, close all open apps and also log out of all users but one. Restart both your phone and your computer. Then, try using a different cable and a different USB port on your computer.
If that doesn’t help, plug your iPhone into your computer and perform a force restart while it’s plugged in–see if your computer and the Photos App now recognizes your iPhone.
Perform a Forced Restart
On an iPhone 6S or below plus all iPads & iPod Touches, press Home and Power at the same time until you see the Apple logo
For iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus: Press and hold both the Side and Volume Down buttons for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo
On an iPhone X Series or iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus: Press and quickly release the Volume Up button. Then press and quickly release the Volume Down button. Finally, press and hold the Side button until you see the Apple logo
Can you provide us with these details:
1) iOS version your iPhone runs (go to Settings > General > About)
2) macOS or Mac OS X version your Mac runs or if a Windows PC, what windows version
Sam
Yvette says
Have the same problem.
No idea what caused this, but all of a sudden my iPhone 5S is no longer recognized by photos, iTunes and also not visible in image capture.
Do not see the pop-up “do you trust this computer” anymore, but in System information/USB the iPhone is shown.
Have tried different USB ports, different cable, restarting the software, restart mac and phone, etc.
Still no solution.
A problem that occurred simultaneously was that after the latest Safari and Itunes update, Safari was not able to open anymore.
This was fixed by renaming a file mobile devices….
Please help, am lost
SK says
Hi Yvette.
Are you using Mac OS X Yosemite?
There is a problem with the recent update that causes both Safari and iPhoto to not open. iPhoto in Yosemite is apparently not launching after iTunes upgrade to 12.8.1
Check if you still have this file: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice
If so, isolate it in a folder on your desktop and then restart your Mac. See if Safari and iPhoto work.
If you back up your system, locate a backup from before the update to iTunes 12.8.1 and copy the folder for this location /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework and replace the newer version that’s there.
Alternatively, people found that updating to Mac OS X El Capitan or macOS Sierra solved all these problems. You could also try reinstalling Mac OS X Yosemite using recovery mode.
Yvette says
Hi SK,
Yes, am still using Yosemite. Have renamed the mobile device file and safari came back. Photo’s and Itunes didn’t Already tried reinstalling Yosemite but with no success either. Will try to locate the backup and otherwise upgrade.
Thanks for the response!
Yvette
Yvette says
Fixed all problems after upgrading to Mojave. Even have more disc space left now 😉
Yvette
Rene says
I tried the reset location settings and then click the “enter fullscreen” and suddenly the sidebar is there.
But if I went back to the normal sized (which before, showed the sidebar) the sidebar wont show up anymore…..
So, it sorta work I guess?
D Coory says
It really is absurd that Apple has these problems. This is WHY we buy Apple products, so we don’t have to deal with stuff like this. The ecosystem is failing and they need to lift their game big time.
Andrew says
I agree 100%. Apple’s new motto should be “it just doesn’t work”. I used to be so excited about getting a new Apple product. Now I dread every update.
trevor steve says
thank you so much!
I had tried everything until finally, turning the iphone off while iphoto was running and leaving it connected worked.
cheers,
Jay says
Thanks! This (along with Keith’s method) worked!
Kaitlin says
Thank you so much; I have wasted all morning trying to put my photos on my computer, and it turned out that I had two screen shots on my phone. As soon as I deleted them, the photos started appearing in iPhoto, and I never would have come up with that on my own.
Litah7 says
Hi I’m having the same issue!!! Have tried calling apple for support but they don’t even know whys wrong. It was working perfectly fine now iPhoto won’t open automatically when I connect my iphone. It doesn’t charge and iTunes won’t recognise it too! Please help somebody!!
Litah7 says
Hi I’m having the same issue!!! Have tried calling apple for support but they don’t even know whys wrong. It was working perfectly fine now iPhoto won’t open automatically when I connect my phone. It doesn’t charge and iTunes won’t recognise it too! Please help somebody!!
Keith says
I just had this happen and fixed it like this. I must’ve disconnected the phone while iTunes was open.
Open iTunes and wait for the phone to come up. Eject the phone. I had iPhoto running in the background and as soon as I ejected it from iTunes it showed up in iPhoto.
redeye37 says
Thank you, You fixed my problem with this fix!
Justin says
Thank you!!! This is the only thing that worked. Thanks for sharing
Rick says
If you have more than 500 photos on your iPhone, it might take a minute or 2 before iPhoto recognizes the iPhone as a connected device.