Speed up Image Capture's recognition of cards and cameras

May 05, '10 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: macjosch

If Image Capture (on my German Mac, it's Digitale Bilder) seems to be slow at recognizing your camera or memory card, check your Bluetooth settings.

I thought it fairly strange when Image Capture on all of my Macs became very slow at recognizing photos on cameras and memory cards. The memory cards showed up on the desktop, however, and photos could be copied manually without problems.

In the end, Image Capture was so slow that the camera entered power saving mode even before it could be recognized. It all looked like a network timeout to me. The list of shared devices (three Sony Ericsson phones and a Samsung phone) was growing with each outdated and swapped mobile phone -- and of course, they were not available via Bluetooth.

Solution: Check your Bluetooth settings in System Preferences and delete all unused and outdated mobile phones that might have cluttered up the list. One or two phones should be the maximum, as Image Capture seems to be waiting for a timeout if the device is not available. If you have no Bluetooth phone in the list, Image Capture will display your photos instantly.

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