A bug has been discovered in Apple's macOS Image Capture app that needlessly eats up potentially gigabytes of storage space when transferring photos from an iPhone or iPad to a Mac.
Discovered by the developers of media asset management app NeoFinder and shared in a blog post called "Another macOS bug in Image Capture," the issue occurs when Apple's Mac tool converts HEIF photos taken by iOS to more standard JPG files.
This process happens when users uncheck the "Keep Originals" option in Image Capture's settings, which converts the HEIC files to JPG when copied to Mac. However, the app also inexplicably adds 1.5MBs of empty data to every single file in the process.
"Of course, this is a colossal waste of space," said the NeoFinder team, "especially considering that Apple is seriously still selling new Macs with a ridiculously tiny 128 GB internal SSD. Such a small disk is quickly filled with totally wasted empty data.
"With just 1000 photos, for example, this bug eats 1.5 GB off your precious and very expensive SSD disk space."
NeoFinder's developers say they discovered the bug by "pure chance" when working on improving the metadata capabilities of NeoFinder using a hex editor, and provided an example shot of what the end of individual JPG files look like in hex, post-transfer.
MacRumors was also able to replicate the issue in macOS 10.14.6 and later using an online hex editor. It's worth noting that the bug only occurs when transferring photos from Apple devices, not when importing photos from digital cameras using Image Capture.
NeoFinder's team says it has notified Apple of the bug, and the developers suggest anyone plagued by the issue can try using a new beta version of the third-party utility Graphic Converter, which includes an option to remove the unwanted empty data from the JPEG files.
Thursday January 16, 2025 6:45 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today adjusted estimated trade-in values for select iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models in the U.S., according to its website.
Some values increased, while others decreased. The changes were not too significant, with most values rising or dropping by $5 to $50.
We have outlined some examples below:
Device
New Value
Old Value
iPhone 15 Pro Max
Up to $630
U ...
Wednesday January 15, 2025 7:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
While the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" is not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the "ultra-thin" device.
Overall, the "iPhone 17 Air" is shaping up to be a mixed bag. Due to its thinness, the device is expected to have some limited specifications compared to the iPhone 17 Pro models, including only a single rear camera, only a single speaker, no SIM...
Thursday January 16, 2025 12:39 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided the third beta of iOS 18.3 to developers today, and while the betas have so far been light on new features, the third beta makes some major changes to Notification Summaries and also tweaks a few other features.
Notification Summary Changes
Apple made multiple changes to Notification Summaries in response to complaints about inaccurate summaries of news headlines.
For...
Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app.
Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
Thursday January 16, 2025 8:18 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is in talks with Barclays and Synchrony about becoming its new financial partner for the Apple Card, according to Reuters sources.
The report today added that Apple has also been holding discussions with Chase Bank owner JPMorgan since last year, so there are at least three potential companies in the running to take over the Apple Card from current partner Goldman Sachs.
Goldman...
Thursday January 9, 2025 5:45 am PST by Joe Rossignol
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
iPhone 17 Pro concept based on rumors
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of January 2025:
More aluminum: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models ...
Wednesday January 15, 2025 8:49 am PST by Joe Rossignol
There is a good chance that Apple's first product announcement of 2025 will be updated 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models with the M4 chip.
Last month, Apple released macOS Sequoia 15.2, and in doing so it accidentally confirmed new MacBook Air models are coming this year (unsurprisingly).
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the new MacBook Air models will be announced "earlier" than some...
The iPhone 17 lineup will feature a vapor chamber heatsink to improve thermal performance, according to a new report.
The news comes from Chinese tech news site MyDrivers, which claims that the entire iPhone 17 lineup, consisting of the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max, will adopt the improved thermal heat spreader.
Vapor chamber technology is already used...
Friday January 17, 2025 5:30 am PST by Joe Rossignol
2025 promises to be quite a big year for Apple, with the company rumored to be planning more than 20 product announcements this year.
Apple's rumored smart home hub will be its second all-new product to launch in as many years, following the Apple Vision Pro headset last year. And of course, we will get several new iPhone and Apple Watch models, like every year. Beyond that, Apple could...
Sadly image capture is the fastest way to transfer 20k photos to an external hard drive, since Photos is unable to. The level of detail overlooked on Apple's software lately is beyond bizarre.
I use this app every day and knew something was wrong with it and could see Apple has not updated it hardly at all. I know Tim Cook would like me to use his "preferred app", but I want to arrange my photos as I see fit, not how bean counter Tim Cook prefers me to. I was wondering why my Mac OS drive was getting bloated for no particular reason. Now I know. I'm the same way with iTunes. I do not want my music where Tim Cook wants it located. I have an entire music drive for that. Maybe I'm getting ancient in partitioning and such which many will say is no longer necessary. I rely on it for backups and such and use multiple HDs and SDs. If they were all grouped together in a RAID, I'd never know where the problem is or how to fix it and might lose it all. There might be newer ways, but I know mine works. I had an entire Toshiba HD shred itself to death in my sleep for no particular reason once, but my method saved most of my stuff.
A bug has been discovered in Apple's macOS Image Capture app that needlessly eats up potentially gigabytes of storage space when transferring photos from an iPhone or iPad to a Mac.
