Lost photos

[MrJasonBoardman]

Hi All,

Just looking for some support. I'm sure i'm just being a bit simple, but I had some photos in various folders on my Mac desktop - the photos were originally taken on an iPhone, I then imported them on to the Mac and deleted them from the iPhone to save on storage.

Just gone to look at them and noticed they're mostly gone, save for one or two in each folder. Can anyone offer me any advice on this please?

All the folders have a 'Waiting to Update' message on them, as shown below. Can't find a way to update them, if this would even help.

The photos aren't anything precious, so if they are lost it is what it is - just some holiday scenery photos or some from sporting events I like to remember

Thanks in advance,

Jason

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

First guess is that maybe you were starting to import photos from your phone and then disconnected it before letting it complete??? Or you started the import, maybe you looked in the folders and saw a complete list of not-yet-actually imported photos and then started deleting them from your phone assuming you had already imported them?

However, have you checked the Photos app? Often THE way to import photos from iPhones is that way: from phone into Photos? If you perhaps did that and then dragged them out to some folders, you may still have originals in Photos. And if it turns out these are lost, that's the way to import them going forward (into Photos).

If you believe the photos were imported into the folders but are not there now, do you have any system backup like a Time Machine backup? If so, you might be able to use it to step "back in time" to recover photos. If you have no such backup, this is the kind of reason to get serious about backup options. Buy or allocate a big fat HDD or two and turn on TM or similar to back up your Mac automatically.

If any of this was done on an older Mac that you've since upgraded, you might check the older Mac to see if they are still stored there? If so, recover from that one.

 

[Slartibart]

in general it would be good to know the versions of macOS and IOS involved (as well as models) and how were the images imported/copied/synched to the Mac?

 

[Saturn007]

Several of us here have had a related problem — the import from an SD card or i-device to Photos completes and we later discover that it didn't import everything.

Which is why automatic delete after import is a bad idea.

It's a nuisance double-checking each import, but one can click on their SD card or device in the Photos sidebar and see if it shows ALL photos imported. I'll even check on the iPad, iPhone, or camera after I put the SD card back in to confirm all photos were imported before deleting them.

Possible solution. Oh, that reminds me. If this happened within the past 30 days, you open the Photos app on your iPhone and look in the Recently Deleted folder and recover them all. It saves deleted photos for 30 days.

 

[Ellinor_William]

I believe that the "Waiting to Update" message suggests that these folders may be linked to iCloud Drive or another cloud service. Firstly, go to the Photos app, verify if your missing photos are in your iCloud library and force iCloud Sync to your mac. Then go to Recently Deleted in the sidebar, the lost photos may be there for 30 days.
Use Spotlight Search (Cmd + Space) and type .jpg or .heic to find any images. If all fails, a recovery tool like Stellar Mac Photo Recovery software would be helpful to recover your lost pictures.