Why can't I download images from my Apple iPhone?

This is just the weirdest thing: I got a new Apple iPhone after my old one broke and now when I hook it up to my iMac, it sees the phone, but I can't copy the photographs off the camera. In fact, there aren't even thumbnail preview images when I check with ImageCapture. What's going on?

Dave's Answer:

This is a less uncommon problem than you may think, as can be ascertained if you've used Google to try and find a solution and ended up here. I can't figure out exactly why this happens, but somehow the connection between the phone and the computer gets out of whack and while the Mac can see that there are photos on the iPhone, it can't quite access the content itself.

When I first encountered it myself, I figured "yeah, unplug and replug-in the phone to the computer and it'll be happy."

I was wrong.

Next step, reboot the Apple iPhone (which, btw, is done by holding down the home button on the front of the phone and - simultaneously - the button on the top right edge of the phone for at least ten seconds).

That didn't fix it either.

Here's what I was seeing:

Right off the bat, there should be image previews here, so it's already clear that something has gone a bit akilter.

Try to download images and you again are confronted with the lack of preview thumbnails, which is definitely odd:

image capture iphone no thumbnails downloading

No surprise, the destination download folder isn't exactly full of images:

The solution that worked for me, and for others whose experience I read about online?

reboot the Mac itself

For some reason that fixed the problem and once rebooted, the plugged-in iPhone worked normally, with preview thumbnails showing up in the useful Mac OS X utility ImageCapture:

The thumbnails showing up during a download:

image capture iphone download thumbnails

And the image files and photographs themselves finally successfully transferred to the iMac or MacBook or whatever you have:

Sporadically I do find that it gets messed up again, and I'm not thrilled that I have to reboot my computer each time, so perhaps someone can offer some insight into a better, more long-term solution to the problem?

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Categorized: Mac OS X Help , iPhone and Cell Phone Help (Article 8876, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: apple iphone, image capture, iphone connection problems, mac os x
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Reader Comments To Date: 12

Jason said, on March 1, 2010 6:35 PM:

that was your solution? Restart!? everyone tries that first. It doesnt work for my my iphone does not show up in image capture or iphone when plugged in... what do i do?

Cheers! said, on June 3, 2010 11:15 AM:

Thanks, Restart did work for me, I didn't try it before I searched!

Initially I opened image capture and plugged in my iphone and all i saw (instead of thumbnails) were jpg icons, and when I tried to import got an alert reading "Import error."

I restarted and then opened image capture and then finally plugged in my iphone- joy, the thumbnail images showed up.

Malik said, on July 14, 2010 6:44 PM:

Try disabling your password and Lock and retry, that should work

Will said, on October 3, 2010 11:25 PM:

I just had this happen, and I came across your blog. I thought I would look under the hood to see if there was a process that could be killed on the Mac.

I unpluged the phone.
Then found Image Capture Extension, killed that
Plugged the phone back in, and it works.

So much better than having to restart the Mac

Zax said, on December 20, 2010 4:04 AM:

I found that simply unlocking the phone (swipe then input unlock code) made it appear instantly in image capture and work fine. Nice security feature to stop anyone from stealing your pictures!

Priscila said, on December 22, 2010 3:12 PM:

Thank you very much for your help! I was really angry because I couldn't download my pictures, and all I had to do was unlocking my iphone.

Thank you very much!!!

Dave Shaver said, on March 20, 2011 10:25 AM:

My issue was that I would plug the iPhone 4 running iOS 4.3 into my Windows 7 64-bit machine without Apple Quicktime installed and the phone would appear normally. However, when opened with Windows Explorer the "Internal Storage\DCIM" folder would appear totally empty. In addition the "import photos using Windows" options showed that there were no photos available.

The secret is that you must first unlock the phone (get it to the home screen) before you plug it into the computer. This makes total sense when you think about it -- this provides security to your photos should you lose the phone. Only if the phone is unlocked can you see (and download) the photos. Clever but not at ALL clear the first time you have this issue.

In short, for me no reboot of PC nor iPhone is required -- disconnect iPhone, unlock, reconnect.

Jarrett said, on March 26, 2011 6:31 AM:

Dave, thanks so much for this tip. You're a lifesaver!

Lamar J said, on June 14, 2011 3:12 PM:

Thanks for the help, it is strange that I have this issue now, but at least it is fixed. The simple reboot worked for me. The comments about the phone being locked are interesting but I had the problem regardless of the "locked" stated of my phone.

Russ Alman said, on November 1, 2011 11:28 AM:

Force quitting the Image Capture Extension from the Activity Monitor, then relaunching Image Capture, and plugging the phone back in fixed it for me.

Rebooting does seem to fit it in Lion, probably because of the automatic reload function.

Claudiu said, on December 25, 2011 8:14 PM:

1. Click on Preview
2. File
3. Import From Iphone

Rusty said, on October 30, 2012 4:32 AM:

Thank you ,
Rebooting my new phone did the trick
:)
xx

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

Why can't I download images from my Apple iPhone?

Reader Comments To Date: 12

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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