Image Capture takes a long time to import and convert photos and videos from iPhone to MacBook

On a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) running macOS High Sierra I have connected an iPhone X via a Lightning cable and am transferring all the photos and videos taken with the iPhone to a folder I created on the MacBook using Image Capture.

I was expecting it to be just a file transfer process, but instead I can see that some conversion it taking place and this is taking a lot longer than expected.

Do you know why this conversion is necessary and whether there is a way to bypass it? All I want to do is to quickly transfer these files from the iPhone to the MacBook.

Solution 1:

iPhone settings -> Photos -> Transfer to Mac or PC -> Switch from "Automatic" to "Keep Originals"

There's also a "Keep Originals" option in the OSX Image Capture app, I'm not sure how the two options interact with each other. From my brief testing, if the box is ticked in either place then imports will be super-fast and you'll get the original .heic images instead of the converted .jpeg ones.

Solution 2:

I got the same problem with iMac Late 2011 with High Sierra and iPhone 8. Image Capture takes forever and makes it almost impossible to import a big bunch of images. There seems not to be much information on the Net so far.

There are also issues with connecting the iPhone to the Mac, in some cases the iPhone is not recognized.

For new pictures I turned HEIC off in the Settings ("Interoperability" in the Settings for Camera), then the import is quite fast (if it connects...)