Fixing iPhone Disconnects From Image Capture
It appears that each time tethering is enabled or disabled on the iPhone, it disconnects Image Capture.
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Thankfully the workaround is simple – disable tethering, or enable Airplane mode, while you’re using Image Capture.
Previously:
Update (2026-02-02): Jamie Cuevas:
This is not something new, but it is frustrating. Disconnecting the iPhone and camera happened to me with such regularity that I eventually relented and ended up enabling iCloud Photos on my Mac and on my iPhone just so that I could consistently have photos move from one device to another without these disconnections and transfer interruptions.
This is a refinement of my workflows for ingesting files from an iPhone or iPad camera, to move them onto my photo archive drive, and allows the removal of Image Capture from the process, which is good because the macOS USB driver can be flaky, and I’ve had at least one system crash from physically plugging in my iPhone.
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In effect, what this workflow does, is move all Airdropped movies and images to their respective type folders in my home directory, and then, if they’re the original images taken on the devices, shifts them over to the root folder for the respective device on the photo drive, and once they arrive there, they’re processed into a Y/M/D folder hierarchy.
