IPhone – Error on transferring photos from iPhone onto Photos on Mac

data transferiphonephoto-streamphotosphotos.app

From time to time I would like to be able to save WhatsApp photos (on my iPhone) into Photos (on my Mac).

Here is how I proceed:

  1. On my iPhone I allowed WhatsApp to access my Photos (read and write).

  2. From WhatsApp within a chat I select a photo, and open the bottom left menu to save it:

    save on iPhone.

  3. I connect my iPhone on my Mac, using my USB cable.

  4. On my Mac I start Photos, select my iPhone, select the photo to import, and click Import 1 Selected.

And I get the following error from Photos:
Photos error message

NB: there is no Cloud service involved here.

My question is simple:

What is the real meaning and cause of this error message?

Did I do something wrong?

Is this is a known bug?

Best Answer

False error

Yes, my method is correct. The problem isn't coming from WhatsApp and is more general to the process of transfering photos from Photos on iPhone toward Photos on Mac.

Here is the way I was able to get back my photo on My Mac, verify it was correctly transferred, and finally import it manually inside Photos.

On my Mac I made a search for any file with the name produced in the error window, from Terminal I entered:

cd ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary
find . -name "6c65168d-*"
./Masters/2018/11/05/20181105-103812/6c65168d-da6c-4df4-8239-28ab4d59c9dd.JPG
./Masters/2018/11/05/20181105-103830/6c65168d-da6c-4df4-8239-28ab4d59c9dd.JPG
./Masters/2018/11/05/20181105-111753/6c65168d-da6c-4df4-8239-28ab4d59c9dd.JPG

The "6c65168d-*" argument to find means find any file which name begins with 6c65168d- and print it. The 3 result lines I got are correct and due to the fact I tried with smaller set of images 3 times to focus on the image causing the error.

Next, if I try to open any of these files, they do without any error within Preview, and moreover they can be easily imported within Photos without any error.

Conclusion

The error message is inappropriate and seems like an internal error within Photos on Mac or within the transfer process from iPhone to Mac.

I will continue the analysis of this stupid bug and report it to Apple.

Errors are already enough of a problem.

False errors are worse.

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