Auto Import Photos from Android Phone to iPhoto on OS X

[moogoos]

I have been using an iPhone since its inception and well, since the iPhone 5 I realized I've been wasting a ****load of money on a phone that is overpriced, underpowered and featureless. In comes the Samsung Galaxy S4 and to say I am stoked is an understatement.

There are a few things that I did like with the iPhone that I have to find and learn other ways to do. Importing photos into iPhoto seamlessly is one of them. What I did before was plug in iPhone, iPhoto starts, import all, delete from source. Then I would delete crappy pics, create albums, crop edit and share away like a mindless Facebook zombie I am.

To do this with my new phone wasn't easy to figure out. There are ideas of using Dropbox, don't want to rely on an external service nor do I want to sync with dropbox. It's slow. Plus I have my MacBook pictures directory syncing to a NAS that then sends off to CrashPlan. I don't want to muck with more changes and folders not to mention it's not automagic. In comes Automator.

The first thing you need to do is find a service that can do a data sync on your phone. Choose whatever you wish. I chose SyncMate. I plug in the phone, it syncs specified things. Simple enough.

To make the automagic part work, first create a folder in your iPhoto library called import or something similar. Then setup a one-way sync from your phone to this directory. Should looks like this:

Then go into Spotlight and type Automator.

You'll get this app that pops up that lets you do certain custom actions.

Choose Folder Action:

Then in the left main frame, on the right column scroll down to "Import files Into iPhoto"

and drag it into the right frame.

There choose your Import folder that you created at the very beginning of this guide.

Then I choose to create a new album and delete source files.

Then sync away. Once you launch iPhoto your photos should be in there under the latest import of some untitled album. Clean up and do what you want.

Seems to be the only viable solution for me yet. The issue I had with using iPhoto detecting my phone and importing automatically is that I have my photos on my external SD card. iPhoto doesn't seem to see it. If anyone has ideas on that please let me know.

The only thing I can't do is delete the file on the phone easily. Then it gets recopied. So that's a bummer.


****UPDATE****

This solution sucks

 

[Kathryn Herren]

Thank you! I am missing my iPhone mainly for this reason. I tried Kies, Airdroid, have Dropbox but this sounds better, albeit more involved. I hope something works! What a PITA...

 

[kailua128]

I just switched from iphone 4gs to the S4- loving it, but like you, want my photos to import into Iphoto seamlessly. It's easy. Open iphoto, connect your phone and on the phone it will say it's connected as a media device. Go to your notifications and select "Connected as a media device". You'll get an option to change the selection to "Connect as a Camera" choose that. On iphoto, the phone will now read as a "camera" and you can import like you always did, delete photos off the phone, etc.

 

[retrogameronline]

I just switched from iphone 4gs to the S4- loving it, but like you, want my photos to import into Iphoto seamlessly. It's easy. Open iphoto, connect your phone and on the phone it will say it's connected as a media device. Go to your notifications and select "Connected as a media device". You'll get an option to change the selection to "Connect as a Camera" choose that. On iphoto, the phone will now read as a "camera" and you can import like you always did, delete photos off the phone, etc.

This is the solution I've been looking for. So simple and yet so hard to find when researching on google.

Thanks!

 

[Vee Lewin]

I tried 'connect as a camera' and it doesn't work to import photos from my Samsung Galaxy Express to my iPhoto on my MacBook Pro. The more complicated solutions are daunting. Any other simple solutions? Is Samsung working on this problem?

 

[Roufa Therrien]

Thanks a lot - I finally was able to import all my photos and videos from my Nexus phone into my Apple computer, and at no extra cost!

 

[scottdk]

I use the Connect as Camera solution too, but for some reason it import everything that resembles an image, including all the album art from my music collection. Is there any way to force it to only import from the DCIM folder?