Long wait when importing photos from iPhone to Photos app

Waiting for a long time at preparing imports pictures from my iPhone to Photos library about hours.

What can I do at this point?

Posted on Sep 20, 2026 11:09 PM

5 replies

léonie

Level 10 (205,585 points)

Sep 20, 2026 11:46 PM in response to kaz-k

There are two possible reasons:

If you are using iCloud Photos it is usually taking a very long time to prepare the photos for import, because most of the items on the iPhone will be new files, as each download from iCloud is creating a new file. In that case it would be better to download directly from iCloud and not from the iPhone. You are risking to import duplicates this way.
If you are having many photos on the iPhone and are shooting photos using the High Efficiency format, but ar downloading them as JPEGs, it will also be very slow. The format conversion is creating new files and and your will want to import them all over again.

Do you have enough free storage on the iPhone for the format conversion? Lack of storage may slow the conversion down.

léonie

Level 10 (205,585 points)

Sep 20, 2026 11:57 PM in response to kaz-k

How many photos are on your iPhone? Are they JPEGs or HEIC?

And you need also enough free storage on your Mac, particularly in the RAM. It helps to quit all other apps, so they will not hog the memory on your Mac and cause memory pressure.

kaz-k Author

Level 9 (53,902 points)

Sep 20, 2026 11:55 PM in response to léonie

Hi, thanks for quick replay.

Yes, I have or I think good enough, about 150GB or more free space on iPhone.

I should wait for a while?

kaz-k Author

Level 9 (53,902 points)

Sep 21, 2026 12:28 AM in response to léonie

Hi,

Pictures on iPhone are about 200 or little less and all of them are JPG.

kaz-k Author

Level 9 (53,902 points)

Sep 21, 2026 12:13 PM in response to léonie

Hi,

Finally just imports pictures from iPhone at last.

Thank you again.

Originally posted at discussions.apple.com/thread/256361661