Photos not recognizing already imported photos

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Level 1

4 points

Photos not recognizing already imported photos

I recently updated my iPhone 15 to iOS 18.7.2 and I therefore had to update my MacBookPro Mid 2014 from High Sierra to the latest Catalina in order to be able to import new photos taken with iOS 18. Now Photos on Catalina doesn't recognize already imported photos that I downloaded to my phone for example through WhatsApp or google drive, so they keep appearing in the "New to Import" section.

My photo library is on an external drive. I already tried to repair the photo library.

I already read that a couple of other people have that problem too but didn’t really see a solution yet.

I tested importing one of the already imported photos and I realized that the photo imported on Catalina has a different name than the one imported on High Sierra (before: long whatsapp name .jpg, after shorter name with .JPG). It also seemed a bit buggy (preview of the old photo missing after viewing new photos taken and after viewing the old photo the preview of the new photo was missing)

Do newer version of Photos ever fix this issue? The latest update that my MacBook supports is Big Sur.

I don’t want to delete the photos on my phone and it affects thousands of photos, so I really wouldn’t want to reimport them and delete the old ones and sort the new photos into albums again.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 11, 2025 12:07 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 11, 2025 12:40 AM in response to manu_18

manu_18 wrote:

through WhatsApp

My photo library is on an external drive

Social media sites like WhatsApp, Facebook etc strip all metadata from images. Then all image dates are usually based on very fragile filesystem file creation dates instead more robust internal EXIF dates. So apparently Photos can't tell that those images are already imported and treats them as new.

One way to avoid manually guess and insert proper dates might be to route the images via iCloud Photos from the iPhone Photos. Then the dates would be at least the date when that image arrived from WhatsApp to the iPhone (but not the correct datetime when the image was actually shot...).

Make sure the external drive is formatted as APFS or MacOS Extended because non-Mac formats like exFAT are not supported and might corrupt the library and do not work properly anyway.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,525 points

Dec 11, 2025 6:52 AM in response to manu_18

Have you changed any Settings on the iPhone in the Photos > Transfer to Mac or PC section?

If you have previously been using "Most Compatible" and converted HEIC files to JPEG on import, and are now importing without converting the media, Photos will no longer be able to recognize the photos as already imported, because they are now in a different format.

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Answer 3

Dec 11, 2025 7:09 AM in response to manu_18

Matti Haveri wrote: Make sure the external drive is formatted as APFS or MacOS Extended because non-Mac formats like exFAT are not supported and might corrupt the library and do not work properly anyway.

Adding: Even though there were warnings from Apple, before Ventura (I think) Mac OSs allowed Photos Libraries to be run from ExFAT drives. We here heard lots of horror stories about Libraries going along smoothly, apparently working quite well, and then suddenly refusing to cooperate, losing lots of information and allowing limited recovery. Since Ventura, Photos refuses to open Libraries on improperly formatted drives. So now we see "Why do I get this 'cannot be opened'" questions.

So Matti's warning is especially important since you are running an older OS. If your Library is not on a Mac formatted Library, you should stop running it immediately. To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. The drive must be connected directly to the Mac by cable, not networked, clouded, NASed, etc. Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted. There have been so many problems with using incompatible drives that the newest macOSs won't even allow a Library on a non-Mac formatted drive to open, since there is a chance of damaging the Photos database. See this:

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

APFS has been standard since High Sierra.

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

200,525 points

Dec 11, 2025 7:22 AM in response to manu_18

One problem is, that the Photos.app is now assigning internally new, unique filenames to downloaded photos. You mentioned that the shared photos are now having different filenames.

I am afraid you will have to remove either the renamed versions from your iPhone or the already imported images from your Mac to fix this.

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Answer 5

manu_18 Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 11, 2025 7:06 AM in response to léonie

No, I haven’t changed the setting and it is on automatic. But it recognizes the heic photos correctly as already improved, I think it only doesn’t recognize the photos that are already saved as jpeg on my phone (because they were downloaded and not taken with my phone)

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Answer 6

manu_18 Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 11, 2025 2:38 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

Richard.Taylor wrote:

To avoid damaging the Photos Library an external drive must be formatted in either APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

Thankfully my drive is formatted in Mac OS Extended (journaled).

Additionally, the drive can not have had Time Machine on it since it was formatted.

What do you mean by that? I have my Time Machine backup, the photo library and even my iPhone backup on that same drive 😳 Eventhough I feel like this is probably not connected to my issue as i believe that the app is just assigning new unique filenames, should I be concerned about this setup, although it has been working fine so far?

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