Solved – Mac OSX Image Capture does not recognize iPhone anymore

This has been wrecking my nerves for weeks. I don´t like the way iPhoto or Picasa manages my Photos so I like to rely on my own way of handling them in a plain file/foldersystem. I have been using Mac OSX´s Image Capture tool for this until recently it simply stopped working.

I am quite sure it happened after an update of either the iPhone or iTunes. Anyway, I surfed the web for ways to make it work again but nothing really worked. If you are in a similar situation – here is what made it working for me again (without any warranties).

  • I deleted the Image Capture .plist file in the Library folder (search for “imagecapture” and “.plist”)
  • I reseted the PRAM memory which is done by
    – rebooting
    – pressing CMD+Option Key+P+R before the grey screen appears
    – stop pressing key combination after screen goes black

After starting up again and firing up Image Capture it first said “No device found” for 5 seconds AND then showed up the iPhone under Devices again. Hope it works for you too!

23 comments so far

  1. bob on

    Thank you! I deleted all my ImageCapture plist files and it showed up again! You don’t have to reset the PRAM.

  2. Arjun on

    Hello,

    I’ve been going crazy trying to sort this out. My Image Capture has never been able to recognise the iphone. I tried searching for imagecapture files and .plist files, but I can’t find any!

    Any idea why?

    Thanks!

    • easyel on

      Maybe they are hidden? You need to enable full fiew on your file system in order to be able to see them, I guess. This has been ages ago and I don´t know how exactly I enabled this… maybe try to Google for somthing like “mac osx enable full system view” or something.

  3. Jeff Petersen on

    To find the .plist file look in the Finder under Places>YourProfileName>Library>Preferences folder. It should be com.apple.Image_Capture.plist

  4. taranaki on

    I have been frustrated by this for weeks and your solution worked!

    In fact I deleted all the .plist files for both iPhoto and Image Capture, then reset the PRAM (which was necessary in my case).

    Huge kudos!

    • easyel on

      A pleasure!

  5. sudevi on

    hi. i had the same problem, image capture didn´t recognize my 4GS, and i called apple support. this is what we did and it worked!

    . go to finder, open your applications folder, go to the utilites folder
    . open disk utility
    . select your HD
    . click on the “repair disk permissions” button
    …..leave it some time to do a system check, mine took about 10 minutes though it said it would take an hour.

    …viola! it worked

    good luck!

    sdd

    • Maqbool on

      Thanks a ton! Worked like a charm.

  6. Msjf Fhosdf on

    yep…deleting plist files worked for me. I use image capture every time to download and delete photos form my iphone and I’ve never had it not show up before. This trick worked instantly though. Thanks.

  7. Rosemarie on

    No success with the repair disk permissions suggestion. iphone4 still not recognized…

  8. Eric on

    Repairing disk permissions didn’t work for me either.

    Removing the plist and resetting PRAM did! Thanks.

    A few extra instructions for removing the plist file.

    1) Open Terminal (by default you’ll be in your home directory)
    2) type “cd /Library/Preferences/”
    3) type “rm com.apple.Image_Capture.plist”
    You can run that last remove command again and it should say “No file found” now.
    4) Reboot and hold command+ctrl+p+r to reset PRAM

  9. ebikko on

    it works with repair disk permission. thanks a lot😀

  10. Thank you! on

    Thank you! Finally! Simply deleting the com.apple.Image_Capture.plist file also worked for me. Image Capture reappeared right afterward. I did not have to reset the PRAM. Thank you again!

  11. Joyce on

    I cant even find the com.apple.Image_Capture.plist file and it is getting really annoying now. My cameral roll is pilling up with photos and I really need to transfer them asap. Is there any other method what I can do?

  12. DMB on

    For me, deleting the plist files worked, too. Thanks for the tip!

  13. Meike on

    if we reset the PRAM memory, will our data on mac be gone or not?

    • easyel on

      Nope, it has nothing to do with the data in your harddisc.

  14. Cambeeo (@cambeeo) on

    This still works in 2015! I was going crazy on that issue. You should get an award. Thank you so much!

    • easyel on

      6 years and this bug is still alive. It’s insane but I am glad I was able help out. Cheers!

  15. Ilana on

    how do I find the com.apple.Image_Capture.plist file?
    I go into profilename

    • easyel on

      Hi Ilana, you probably don´t have enabled to view hidden files. Here is a good explanation on how to enable viewing hidden files in Finder.

  16. Ann on

    At this moment you are my absolute favourite person in the entire world. After years of problem-free hooking up the same camera to my iMac, Image Capture suddenly stopped recognising it from one week to the next for no apparent reason. Removing the plist files worked like a charm. Didn’t need to reset the PRAM thank goodness as that would probably have been too scary for me. As a lone female with no computer expert to call on if something goes wrong I was nervous enough as it is just deleting the plist. Thanks so much!

    • easyel on

      Being someones favorite person (for about a minute) feels good😉. Glad I could help!


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: