You plugged in your iPhone or a camera card, hit import, and the Photos app just… sits there. Spinning wheel, "Importing 0 of 3,412," or it quits the second you click. The good news: a stuck import is almost never lost photos. It is a stalled queue, a disk that is out of room, or iCloud Photos trying to sync at the same time. Work through these in order and stop at the one that fixes it.
The 60-second fixes (try these first)
- Quit and reopen Photos. Press ⌘ (Command) + Q to fully quit — not just the red dot — wait ten seconds, and reopen. A single frozen import job clears about a third of the time here.
- Unplug and replug the source. A bad cable or a half-seated card reader stalls the transfer silently. Try a different USB-C port and, if you can, a different cable.
- Unlock your iPhone and tap "Trust." If you are importing from a phone, the Mac cannot read it until the phone is unlocked and you have tapped Trust This Computer. A locked phone shows the device but imports zero.
- Restart the Mac. The oldest fix in the book still clears a wedged photo-analysis process better than anything else. Do this before the deeper steps below.
Step 1: Check your free disk space
Importing 2,000 photos and videos can need tens of gigabytes of free space — and Photos does not always warn you clearly when it runs out. Click the Apple menu → System Settings → General → Storage and look at what is free. If you are under about 15–20 GB, the import will stall or fail partway.
Need to clear room fast? Our guide to fixing a full Mac walks through the safe deletions in order. If your drive is chronically full, a bigger internal SSD is not upgradeable on modern MacBooks — that is a common reason people move to a roomier model from our Apple clearance lineup.
Step 2: Pause iCloud Photos during the import
This is the single most common cause of a "stuck at 0" import. If iCloud Photos is turned on, your Mac tries to upload every new image to iCloud while it imports — and if your upload is slow or your iCloud storage is full, the whole queue jams.
Open Photos → Settings (⌘,) → iCloud and temporarily uncheck iCloud Photos. Import your photos locally, confirm they landed, then re-enable iCloud Photos and let it sync in the background. If your iCloud storage itself is full, that is worth sorting out separately — see how iCloud storage works on a Mac.
Step 3: Force-quit the stuck import process
If Photos is frozen and will not even quit normally, force it: press ⌘ (Command) + Option + Esc, select Photos, and click Force Quit. Reopen it. Any photos that already came in are saved — Photos imports in batches, so you have not lost the ones that made it. Just re-run the import and it will skip duplicates.
Step 4: Repair the Photos library
A corrupted library database will fail every import until you rebuild it. This is safe and does not delete photos. Quit Photos completely. Then hold ⌘ (Command) + Option and, while holding them, open Photos. A Repair Library window appears — click Repair and let it finish (it can take a while on a large library). When it reopens, try the import again.
Sometimes this same box — “The Photos library needs to be repaired” — appears on its own the moment you open Photos, before you import anything. That is Photos telling you its database is inconsistent. Clicking Repair is the correct, safe response: it rebuilds the catalog without touching your actual image files, so you will not lose photos. Let it run to completion, even on a large library.
Step 5: Import a smaller batch (or bypass Photos)
Some cards and phones have one bad file that halts the entire queue. Instead of importing everything at once, select a few hundred at a time. Or skip Photos altogether: open Image Capture (it is in your Applications → Utilities-adjacent apps), pick your device, and drag the images straight to a folder. If Image Capture pulls them fine, the problem is the Photos library, not the photos — go back and do Step 4.
When it is not the app — it is the Mac
If imports crawl on every app, the Mac beachballs constantly, and the fan roars during simple tasks, the storage or the machine is the bottleneck. An older Intel MacBook with a failing SSD will stall photo imports no matter how many times you repair the library. If that sounds familiar, our why is my MacBook so slow guide helps you tell a software snag from failing hardware.
When it is the hardware, a refurbished Apple-silicon Mac imports thousands of photos in seconds and never breaks a sweat. A MacBook Air M1 starts at $450 and an M2 at $549 at LuxuriousComputers — each fully tested, cleaned, and covered by our own one-year warranty. Browse current deals on Apple clearance, or see the full buying guides.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my Mac say "importing" but nothing happens?
Nine times out of ten it is iCloud Photos jamming the queue (Step 2) or the disk being full (Step 1). Pause iCloud Photos, free up space, quit and reopen Photos, and re-run the import.
Will force-quitting Photos during an import lose my pictures?
No. Photos imports in batches and saves each one as it lands, and it skips duplicates when you re-run. Anything already imported stays; anything not yet imported is still safely on your phone or card.
How do I fix a corrupted Photos library?
Quit Photos, then hold Command + Option while opening it to reach the Repair Library tool. It rebuilds the database without deleting photos. This clears most "import fails every time" problems.
Why is my iPhone not showing up in Photos on my Mac?
Unlock the iPhone and tap Trust This Computer, try a different cable and USB-C port, and make sure the phone is not in a Do Not Disturb / Guided Access state. A locked or untrusted phone appears as a device but imports zero photos.