IOS – MacBook applications say “no photos” but they are on the iPhone

iosphotosvideo

I recently took photos and videos and am now unable to import photos over USB. Image Capture shows the iPhone without any photos, Photos says "No Photos". Image Capture was working fine until I went on a filming spree (48 photos and two 2-minute videos). I am also unable to move a video to the trash: the thumbnail disappears from the list, then the "Cancel" button freezes and has no effect, the video does not appear in the trash, and when I go back to "All photos" another video is selected. I can take new photos on the device but they are not saved to memory.

Unlike this thread, both devices are up to date: iOS 9.3.5 and macOS Mojave 10.14.5.

The same thing happened to a friend who had so many photos that the device complained of lack of space. My storage says 5 GB used and 7 GB available.

How can I transfer the photos and videos from the device?

Best Answer

Turning it off and on again

The first and easiest solution was to restart the iOS device (I found this while trying the second solution). Then both Image Capture and Photos were able to see and download the photos and videos, although Image Capture gave an error 50:

I needed to restart the device to import a few remaining photos. Image Capture is still unable to delete photos from the device after multiple attempts: a gray box says "Deleting..." and it hangs. I am now backing up the data, restoring the firmware, and restoring the data.

Using the cloud

I set up iCloud on the iOS device and on the computer to share photos: Settings > iCloud > Sign in, then when asked for an iCloud passcode I entered the lock screen code (hint from discussions.apple.com, and I also had to enter the login password of the computer.

The media did not sync immediately, so I went into the iOS Photos application and realized it had hung, so I restarted the device and then Image Capture started working again. Nevertheless, iCloud photos did not sync the photos from the device.

Other alternatives are the Dropbox and Google Drive apps on iOS. Because I got the photos from the first solution above, I did not try these.

Update (September 2020): After one year of syncing photos with Image Capture and deleting them manually, I have toggled the delete behavior back to normal with some unknown reason. Now when I sync photos, they are deleted from the device. It may be due to the same problem, which caused the behavior again and toggled the problem back to normal. What I did this time was to unplug the cable during transfer of videos, then no photo would transfer and I was unable to delete photos on the device and a new photo would have the button "All photos" greyed out (even though I still had those videos), I restarted the device and now it is working again.

Alternatives

(At this point I just can't justify $140 for Lightroom, or commit to their CC to get it...)

darktable

Alternatively, for an application more powerful than iPhoto, and holds its own against Lightroom or Aperture, I've discovered darktable, which

"is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them."

darktable can be installed manually, but is also maintained as a port using MacPorts, if you prefer to use package management. I've included step by step instructions for installing MacPorts and darktable below.

GIMP

An extremely powerful alternative to editing photos is using the GIMP. The GIMP can be installed manually, or built from source using MacPorts. I've included instructions below on how to install the GIMP using MacPorts. If you know Adobe Photoshop well, you may want to demo using GIMPshop, which very cleverly and conveniently reconstructs the look and feel of the GIMP to appear and behave nearly just like Photoshop... and its all for free.

MacPorts

MacPorts is a robust, stable, mature and easy to use package management solution, for OS X. It is modeled after FreeBSD's ports system, which has been adopted as the basis of NetBSD's pkgsrc. I highly recommend MacPorts.

install Xcode 5.1.1

MacPorts requires an appropriate version of xcode; xcode_5.1.1.dmg is the most recent version for Mavericks (after registerring for a free developer account, and logging into developer.apple.com, that link will begin your xcode download). Once the download completes, lets just do it all in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app (don't be afraid of the terminal!):

 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ hdiutil attach -quiet -noverify -nobrowse -noautoopen ~/Downloads/xcode_5.1.1.dmg
 goodytx@stack:~$ cp -npR /Volumes/Xcode/Xcode.app /Applications/
 goodytx@stack:~$ hdiutil detach -quiet /Volumes/Xcode
 goodytx@stack:~$ open -g /Applications/Xcode.app; sleep 8
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ killall Xcode.app

install MacPorts

Get to know MacPorts

 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ curl -Ok https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2
 goodytx@stack:~$ tar xf MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2
 goodytx@stack:~$ cd MacPorts-2.2.1
 goodytx@stack:~$ ./configure
 goodytx@stack:~$ make
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo make install     # *not war!*
 goodytx@stack:~$ cd ..
 goodytx@stack:~$ rm -rf Macports-*
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate
 goodytx@stack:~$ diskutil quiet repairPermissions /
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$

add MacPorts to your $PATH:

 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
 goodytx@stack:~$ export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/ man:$MANPATH
 goodytx@stack:~$

install darktable and the gimp

 goodytx@stack:~$
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ port info darktable
 darktable @1.1.2_5 (graphics)
 Variants:             gcc44, gcc45, gcc46, gcc47, gnome_keyring, quartz, universal, [+]x11

 Description:          Darktable is a virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers: it manages your digital
                       negatives in a database and lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable. It also
                       enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.
 Homepage:             http://www.darktable.org/

 Build Dependencies:   cmake, pkgconfig
 Library Dependencies: cairo, curl, dbus-glib, exiv2, gettext, glib2, gtk2, gtk-engines2, jpeg, json-glib, lcms2,
                       lensfun, libglade2, libgphoto2, libpng, librsvg,           libxml2, openexr, sqlite3, tiff, zlib
 Platforms:            darwin
 License:              GPL-3+
 Maintainers:          julians37@gmail.com
 goodytx@stack:~$
 goodytx@stack:~$ port info gimp
 gimp @2.8.10 (graphics)
 Variants:             animation, gmic, quartz

 Description:          This is a META port for the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) which includes support
                       for icns, JP2000 and RAW formats, content-aware rescaling, Gutenprint and scanner frontends
                       and, optionally, an animation tool (the GIMP Animation Package) and an image processing and
                       scientific visualization tool (GREYC's Magic Image Converter).
 Homepage:             http://www.gimp.org/

 Library Dependencies: icns-gimp, gimp-jp2, gimp-lqr-plugin, gtk-nodoka-engine, gutenprint, ufraw, xsane, gimp-app
 Platforms:            darwin
 License:              none
 Maintainers:          devans@macports.org
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ # the port info commands above are unnecessary, you only need one command to install both ports:
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo port -vsc install darktable gimp

migrating from Aperture to darktable

That's really all there is to it. If you can follow a recipe to bake a cake, you can do this too. And you can keep all your ports updated to quite simply with:

 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo port -vsc selfupdate
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo port -vsc upgrade installed

MacPorts will not interfere with the use of OS X, Aperture, iPhoto, Lightroom, nor with any other software. It keeps everything it installs in its /opt directory (and any full gui applications it builds in /Applications/MacPorts/ ).

more free software available

searching macports for "photo" returns 17 more ports besides darktable, while searching for "image" returns a whopping 260 more ports of image utilities

 goodytx@stack:~$ port search photo
 goodytx@stack:~$ # too much to list here
 goodytx@stack:~$ port search image
 goodytx@stack:~$ # way too much to list here

If for whatever reason you are unsatisfied and/or need to remove MacPorts:

to completely uninstall MacPorts

 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo port -dfp uninstall --follow-dependencies installed
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo port -dfp uninstall all
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo rm -rf /opt/local  
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo rm -rf /Library/Tcl/macports*
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ # if you also want to delete any stand-alone gui applications you've built with macports, then there is one more command:
 goodytx@stack:~$ 
 goodytx@stack:~$ sudo rm -rf /Applications/MacPorts
 goodytx@stack:~$

IPad – Direct Analog Video conversion for iPad

None that I'm aware of. Why couldn't the iPads be updated over the air to all download the same pre-converted video? It would take much longer and be extremely redundant to perform this task in the way you describe, over and over again for each iPad, even if a device that could do this existed.