Mounting iPhone to export photos stopped working simply

Support
1

I used to mount my iPhone on USB to export photos to my computer but it does not work anymore: the iPhone appears in Nautilus but the photo folder is empty and no trust dialog occurs.

I can mount iPhone with idevicepair pair and ifuse but it is less practical, in particular, I have to convert HEIC to JPEG.

How to restore usual behaviour: plug iPhone to USB, trust device on iPhone, access iPhone photo folder in Nautilus?

2

I had this problem last week with Android and Plasma. A reboot fixed it.

3

Rebooting did not help.
Updating did not help.

4

This walkthrough might be useful:

As I do not use an iPhone, I’m afraid this is the best I can offer.

Regards.

1 Like
5

As I wrote already, ideivicepair, ifuse work but come with problems: HEIC not JPEG format, photos cannot be properly erased from Linux, you still have to do it from the phone.

6

This problem also occurred in my environment, so I looked into it.
result
The culprit was libgphoto2 (2.5.34-1)
Confirmed that the problem does not occur with libgphoto2 (2.5.33-1)

If you have a backup before [Stable Update] 2026-05-27,
You can restore it and put libgphoto2 in the update exclusion list.
Or it will be solved if you can downgrade to libgphoto2 (2.5.33-1), but I don’t know if it’s possible to downgrade.

7

Indeed I have libgphoto2 2.5.34-1. How did you find the culprit?

Trying to report the bug, I find it may be a known problem.

I have iOS 26.5.2.

8

I noticed the address when I mounted my iPhone in the file manager.
gphoto2://Apple_Inc._iPhone_0000*****************/
Address says gphoto2.

1 Like
9

The iPhone does not prompt for trust as usually before, I enter password without being prompted.

gphoto2 in the command line confirms the problem:

% gphoto2 --auto-detect
Model                          Port                                            
----------------------------------------------------------
Apple iPhone 5 (PTP mode)      usb:001,012     
% gphoto2 --port usb:001,012 --list-folders
There is 1 folder in folder '/'.                                               
 - store_00010001
There are 0 folders in folder '/store_00010001'.
% photo2 --port usb:001,012 --folder /store_00010001 --list-files
zsh: command not found: photo2
% gphoto2 --port usb:001,012 --folder /store_00010001 --list-files
There is no file in folder '/store_00010001'.

In Nautilus, iPhone photo folder is empty but some iPhone documents (of some iPhone applications) are visible.

With older iOS 15.8.8 iPhone, I can see photos in Nautilus and I also get useful output:

% gphoto2 --port usb:001,032 --list-folders
There is 1 folder in folder '/'.                                               
 - store_00010001
There is 1 folder in folder '/store_00010001'.
 - DCIM
There are 5 folders in folder '/store_00010001/DCIM'.
 - 202510__
 - 202511__
 - 202512__
 - 202601__
 - 202606__
There are 0 folders in folder '/store_00010001/DCIM/202510__'.
There are 0 folders in folder '/store_00010001/DCIM/202511__'.
There are 0 folders in folder '/store_00010001/DCIM/202512__'.
There are 0 folders in folder '/store_00010001/DCIM/202601__'.
There are 0 folders in folder '/store_00010001/DCIM/202606__'.

The trust dialog can be forced by resetting Location & Privacy on iPhone but it does not help, on both iPhones.

Rebooting computer and phone did not help.